Divisions with Roxas‏

email 1/12/09
This week I was on divisions the whole week with the Assistants. I really enjoyed it. I got to go to their area bien in the city and sleep in the offices with an air-conditioned room and an oven to cook with. Their area was really nice. It is very well into the city and it has the old European look to it being so old. The buildings were all made a hundred years ago and it is a fun area to look at. It was also very easy to do street contacts because there is a lot of people. Mostly I really enjoyed visiting the members. This is a sweet ward, probably the best in Uruguay. Full Bishopric, Full YM and YW presidencies and youth actually coming, families with returned missionary fathers and mother, sister, and brother. I was sad that I only got to be there for a week. It is an area where you will never have to ask yourself if visiting members is the efficient thing to do. It is the only thing you can do almost. Besides street contacts and going by the addresses if you get them, there isn't much else to do. Knocking isn't an option because of the architecture. HUGE doors and behind the HUGE doors there are corridors with 10 or 20 doors and apartments. If you want to try talking into the doorbell voice box go ahead, but you usually don't get very lucky. Anyway, divisions with Elder Roxas was very fun. He is an Elder from California who has been my Zone Leader before. I really respect him a lot. It was really fun working with him for a week. He and I have the same teaching style and we agree on almost everything as far as missionary work and how it should be done. That was a pleasant week of the mission.

Yesterday after church Elder Roxas and I went to lunch with a member family that has one 5 year old son. The boy was the funniest kid. He spoke like such a grown up. "Señores, siéntense por favor." "Sirs, take a seat please". I can't really think of good examples and I am not in the mood to translate. The kids whole attitude made me laugh. And he knew how to use a computer better than I do. He wanted to show me his favorite truck game on the computer and so I watched him put it in, go through the options screen IN ENGLISH and begin driving in the Rocky Mountain route he had selected. He was up around Cheyenne Wyoming and I read him the signs and told him to start heading to Salt Lake City. It was a very realistic game and it made me very trunky to read those freeway signs. Here is where I thought he was adorable. He had pulled off the freeway to fill up on gas and stopped and waited at a red light. He waited. It changed after 2 minutes and he finally went. And at the next light it was the same story! On these kinds of games you usually just break all the laws and run the lights and drive like crazy because you can. But not this little boy. He had been taught that breaking the law was wrong and so he obeyed all the laws while driving. It was adorable.

In the meantime, my companion Elder Chapman fared well with Elder Anderson and they had our investigators in church and found quite a few new ones. Divisions are good like that. I was very grateful for a week that helped me feel more relaxed because not being in my area all of my preoccupations left me and I just focused on teaching wherever we were.

We played soccer this morning at the church and it made me really tired. I am just not a soccer player and playing with a bunch of Latin Americans the game got really intense because soccer for them is like basketball for me. It got rough. I scored 2 goals! But I paid a price for those goals because I am in a super amount of pain right now. I am so out of shape.

There isn't much more to tell. Oh wait yes there is. On Thursday we were in the chapel for a baptismal interview because the APs were having a baptism on Saturday. Anyway, after the interview the baptismal candidate left and we went back to shut the door after saying goodbye and Elder Roxas said to me "oh dang, get inside." And from down the street came walking a crazed 23 year old fat man in sweat pants and a white T-shirt. We got inside and locked the door. The man just waited outside at the gate, and eventually came up to the glass doors and put his head against the glass doors as he continued to mutter curses at us and look at us as if he wanted to kill us. He gave me nightmares. Anyway, this guy had apparently attacked a missionary last week in the city, punching him in the face and running away. He was completely nuts. He pulled his pants down a few times and shouted I think every swear word in both English and Spanish. The police finally came and he ran away and we got out and locked the chapel and left. It was very crazy.

I felt so bad. I just feel bad for people like that. He is obviously mentally ill and it seems he never really had any chance at a real normal life, or a life with love in it. He wanders the city like that. It makes me very sad. Part of me thought that we needed to go and cast a devil out of him or something. I just feel terrible that some people have to live lives like that. I am certain he didn't choose to be that way. Thank goodness the Plan of Salvation is so perfect and that God will restore unto him whatever agency he may currently lack and he will too have a chance at eternal progression. Even knowing that, it is hard seeing persons like him.

I will end now because there isn't much more to tell. I hope that everyone is happy and healthy. I pray for you tri-daily and I love you all very much!

Andy