a good week 11/19/12

This week was pretty good well, just a lot more "tranquilo" than most weeks. I felt like we had a lot more time to teach and work in our area so that was pretty nice, i`m super stoked and really happy about the families that we are teaching in our area. We found 30 new investigadores last week and so we`ve just been teaching and working with them this week and only 6 of the 30 made it to the chapel yesterday. I`m pretty happy with that but it could be better :] We`ve been teaching famlies, that`s what has been the greatest. It makes it a lot more special to be able to teach famlies because you get to see them progress as a famliy and not just personally. We finally got a reference from the ward the last week and she had come to church the other week and we went to visit her this week and she accepted a baptismal date for December. Her name is Genesis and she told us that she wants to change her life and start from ground zero and follow Jesus Christ so she wants to get baptized just before new year to do it. While I was sitting here I just got a call from Elvis and he told us that he wants us to visit him tomorrow at 8pm, it was super random and I hope that it means that he is really actually ready to change. He had called us about 2 weeks ago drunk and told us how we had lied to him about the church and that Satan had sent us...it was a super big bummer. But I guess it means something good when he is the one searching us and not us. Sometimes it`s hard when people have to change their lives and leave behind addiction and old habits well actually it`s pretty much always hard. 

I`m working a lot with my companion so that he can learn more english it`s been pretty cool helping him out, he already knows a ton of english and we can have pretty much normal conversations in the apartment. He says he really has had to make an effort to learn the english that he knows, and he wants to be able to talk fluently in english. it made me reflect a lot the opportunity that God has given me to be in a different country and learn a different language, i`m not sure how it will benefit me after the mission but I feel really blessed to have been able to learn it. 

so today we went to Pimentel with the zone and played soccer and ate lunch as a zone it was relaxing and nice to just hang out and be with all the missionaries. Everyone is awesome and really nice in the zone so that makes it a lot more enjoyable. To answer your question about the food we don`t ever run out on food so you don`t have to worry about us we always have enough food and money to buy what we need in fact right now we`re going to go to the grocery store to buy food for the week. We probably don`t eat super healthy but what can you do when you don`t know how to make healthy food and your not a good cook hahahha. I`m learning new dishes to cook my companion knows how to cook a little so we don`t have to always eat macaroni and cheese haha. 

Oh funny story this week, yesterday we went to church and after church we were going to our apartment when some of the neighbors came walking up to talk to us. There`s this new house that is getting built in the neighborhood and so they were cleaning the street and shoveling dirt from the street and they wanted us to help them out on Sunday. We weren`t able to help them out but like I said we were coming back from church at about 11:30am and some of neighbors came walking up and start telling us how dirty and flithy we were for not having cleaned the front planting bed. We hadn`t been able to clean the planting bed out and there was some weeds and garbage there and they told us that we were dirty and filthy for not having cleaned our yard out. It was funny because they came with the only intention to make us feel bad I think well at least I felt that way. Our next door neighboor was yelling at us and we told him to calm down and we told them that we would clean our yard, they kept yelling at us and told us that we were dirty and needed to clean the yard. It was funny because we were talking all calmed and nice to them but they kept on harrasing us about our apartment. I cleaned the yard out this morning but it was a good learning experience for me to learn to be Christ like and to avoid contention. It made me feel so bad and it was funny because after it made me not want to do what they had told us. I believe that everyone needs to be treated with kindness and care just like you would want someone to treat you. It was something interesting and funny that happened to me this week.

I was glad to read a little bit about Tate`s homecoming and how everything is going back at home with everything and everyone. Keep me filled in on what is going on back home, you guys will have to let me know what your going to do for thanksgiving and all that! This is kind of random but if you were going to send me a package it`d be super nice if you`d send me a english dictionary not a english spanish dictionary but a english dictionary. I know that is kind of ironic that I want a english dictionary but it will help a lot! Love you guys!!!

-Elder Connelly

ps. the picture i sent is of the tshirts we made for our zone, what do you think???