February 27, 2012

the work has slowed down (as far as numbers of lessons) but we have found some pretty sweet
people. that have alot of potential. more specifically named sara and her husband. she is a sister of one of our less actives. she basically told us this. "ya, sincerely.... i just want to know which one of these churches is the church of Jesus Christ..." i had to bite my tongue to see if i wasn't dreaming or something.. and when her husband heard the
word "elder" he ran out to see what was going on. 14 years ago he was taking missionary lessons, but he moved and lost contact.. the only way it could have gone better is if we set an actual date with them. They said they would be baptized, they just want to be sure its the right church.. it was such a sweet lesson. I'm super exited to teach them more. other than that its just been a real fight to find our investigators.. i am not being negative at all when
i say this nor am i trying to be mean but hispanic people are so flaky. i cant even tell you how many times our lessons drop through or they just are not there.. its frustrating sometimes.. its a fine line of quantity vs quality They call it work for a reason, everything is well.. work is very busy. i can honestly say i have such little time to think about home and stuff like that. Maybe the last five or ten minutes before i go to sleep but usually i just want to go to bed.
love you all. elder garlock

February 20, 2012

nothing very exciting happened this week. i really wish i could share a cool story or something. we almost got a baptismal date. but he didn't want to because his wife isn't interested very much, and he doesn't want to do it alone. afterward we had a really good chat with her and she is going to cook us dinner and going to buy us those masks that the Mexican wrestlers wear on nacho libre. also another funny moment is i was talking with elder sonntag( and yes he is related to them. he is his uncle and i think it was temple pres. but not sure) we were talking about the phrase me cayo bien. which means he/she fell good with me. or we hit it off kind of thing. when you meet someone its like saying ya he is cool we got along. and so i switched the phrase to i fell good with him/her. le cai bien. and right when i said that i stepped i little bit off of the sidewalk and fell right into a garden. there were no flowers or anything like that but i just totally fell belly first. luckily i had an old rain coat on so i didn't get the dirt on my suit. that was pretty funny.

that same night we were wondering where to go and who to visit because i didn't feel good about our plan A and elder sonntag didn't feel good about our plan B. so we prayed on the street to know what to do. so we went to Urbano and Juanna. (some investigator that are soooo hard to find) and they were there. we had a really nice lesson with them about the plan of salvation and she believed it was true. it was really cool.. it was sweet... and at the same time kind of annoying because they say they believe in the things we teach are true but they don't really understand our purpose. for example, some people say that they know Joseph Smith was a true prophet but they don't understand why the authority is important... but we have been making a big improvements with using illustrations and hands on activities. so its getting A LOT better though... on another note.. to keep it short.. the quantity of finding/teaching has gone down. but the quality is getting much better(for investigators) hopefully we can get a good balence of both.

i am doing really good. it's good that you told me about the coat because i was looking to buy one today. so that's good.....IV BEEN OUT FOR ALMOST 7 MONTHS.. SO CRAZY. i cant even believe it.

Feb 7, 2012

My new companion is great. his name is elder Sonntag, he is from Arizona. he is very musically talented.. we are singing in sacrament in two weeks.. notice the we (we will see how that goes.... first time for me). when i was with elder weyland, whenever we had 10 or fifteen min waiting for a meeting at the church i would play a simple hymn or two. i still don't really like the piano that much, but it has made me realize how much i miss playing the violin. then elder sonntag came in and he has added to that desire even more to play the violin. i am going to ask the pres. to see if i can have it sent here. i don't know how much it would cost to send something that big over here. so i guess now i am GIVING A HEADS UP for you guys to jump on it to send it over here if i can have it. tell me if there is going to be a problem with sending it and what not. and so we will have to see with that.

elder sonntag is great we are going to work together really good. of course there are small little things to work out for teaching and stuff but that's just expected with a new companion. other than that we get along just fine and dandy. he introduced me to object lessons. i always knew that they were good. but i have no idea why i didn't use them more in our lessons. i can already see the difference in our lessons. when tyler told me that our investigators are babies and just don't really know anything. how we need to teach simply and clearly. i always understood that but didn't really know how to go about it and teach. After a lot of things i learned from zone conference, district meetings, companionship study etc. there are two things that have helped. teach short, sweet, clear, don't blabber and just throw out doctrine. also, teach like you are teaching a little kid.. as easy as it sounds it's so hard.... of course with these two things there are many other.. hmmm...attachments on how to teach, what to teach , why etc.. all of the stuff to take into consideration. i am excited for this transfer and i feel like we are soooo close to unlocking our investigators doubts or concerns or whatever is delaying them.