Week 3 in Fort Lauderdale...

This has been an incredible week! Elder **** and I decided to take the idea 'If you want to teach more people, talk to more people' to heart! We decided to talk to everybody we met in our path, we made a plan of our route and who we wanted to see and set out. We brought with us STACKS of different cards and on our way to our first appointment kept our eyes peeled, we came across a man walking his dog first and he was familiar with The Church though Family History so we gave him a card. Because he was too busy at the time but wanted us to bless his family and set up a return visit, the whole day went just like that! We figured we had talked to at least 55 people when we did our tally at the end of the day! And that translated to 11 blessings, 5 return appointments, 5 families committed to sacrament, and 3 actually coming! That was so exciting! And I have to say exhausting! I was incredibly tired by the end of the day!

In The Book of Mormon, I have been searching for the steps to conversion, so that I could create a formula for my notes on what an investigator needs to feel and do in order to gain true conversion. This has become quite the little adventure! I have noticed just in the first few dozen chapters how many examples there are! Then as you continue there is increasing steps and details! I had never really understood the Isaiah Chapters of 2nd Nephi but now I realized that they are simply warnings and signs of the Second Coming. They tell us what will happen, but also what we need to do and explain to others so they too can be saved! I have just realized how important those chapters are and plan to use them in that formula, all of this I am realizing as I am writing this letter. I am now VERY excited to add this to my study binder!

We have been struggling with getting information from Elder Park, so being who we are, we took the "Tough Love" approach. It seemed to work!

(I admit, I did feel a little bad about it, for a minute)

Below is the full email conversation...

OK I sent you a packet of letters yesterday and I am sending you a small package soon. I have a lot of time to write letters but not a lot of chances to mail them. I also am sorry that I only have an hour to READ AND WRITE back to you all! I am trying my best! It's REALLY difficult! I'm typing as fast as I can.

On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 12:28 AM, Janette Park <janettepark@msn.com> wrote:

Hey Son!

I love you so much, but you’re tickin me off. You are not getting a normal letter from Dad or I until we get further information. Again, we love you very much, but you are killin’ us. So, here is how we are handling things. Garret, Leah, Dad and I have put together this list of questions. Answer EVERY question and you will receive a gift from us.

1.       Have you mailed any letters to US at all? We have received a packet of letters from Mexico and 1 letter to the Young Men. Anything else? I just answered that.

a.       You have said that you have sent letters and we haven’t seen them. So, we are worried that you may have not put enough postage on them. You do know that postage goes by weight, not size, right?

2.       What are your living circumstances? We have an apartment on the third floor and it's how I expected an apartment to be, a kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a dinning room which is the 'study room'. 

3.       Do you have cockroaches? No, everything is good the worst I've seen is some weavles in a bag of flour thats been here for at least 2 transfers.

4.       What is your address? I don't actually know I will find out and put it in the package I am sending you.

5.       What is your daily schedule? i.e. Wake up at 5, eat breakfast at 5:30, read scriptures at 6, shower at 6:30….

I wrote all about this in my letter that I sent on Wednesday. We wake up at 630 work out, get ready, eat, then Pstudy, Cstudy, Lstudy. Then lunch, then proslyte, its all in the letter that you will probably get tomorrow or the next day, there's a letter for Garret, too.

6.       What is your companion like?
a.       Cool
b.      Alright
c.       Weird
d.      Institutional
e.      Chews with his mouth open
f.        Snores
                He's cool, he has a great knowledge of the docterine and is super helpful. He really knows
                this area, too. There's a grid system like home just its off a little and we're in a weird
                quadrant that makes it difficult for me to know where we are and theres no big land marks
                and that throws off my NSEW.

7.       What is your area like?
a.       Ritzi
b.      Rural
c.       Poor

I am in West Miami and it has a little of each. We like the lower income Spanish area because they are more receptive of us.

8.       What kind of food are you eating? A little bit of everything, Honduran, CUBAN and everything else. A LOT of rice, not to much beans though and all kinds of chicken! 

9.       What are you eating for breakfast? Mostly toast, cereal or PopTarts. We go shopping on P-days on our bikes and buy what ever we feel that we can carry back and thats what we eat for the week.

10.   Do the Members feed you a decent lunch? Oh yes! Often it is too big and they make fun of you if you don't eat 2nds they are great. Some of it's weird and I try to eat what I'm given, but like the other day for the salad they just put a whole tomato and some lettuce on the plate, no dressing, I had to slip the tomato into my bag. The other wierd thing that happens often is the hosts don't eat with us. They make the food and will stand near or even go into the next room and talk to us from there, I find it really weird. Oh, and my companion will NOT eat cheese, he hates it, dosen't even like pizza that much but will eat it. Weird haha!

11.   Have you run in to a crocodile yet? Haven't even seen one yet! haha

12.   Have you been able to share your message with any people that turned in to an investigator? Yes, we have 3 investigators right now or 3 families really, and it has been SUPER exciting teaching them. I wrote about one in my letter that you'll be getting soon.

13.   How much time do you get to be on email each P-Day? 1 hour to read and write you and the Pres. I don't even write any one else!

14.   Where do you go to use the computer? Downstairs in the recroom of the apartments. I describe it better in my letter.

15.   Did you get the pictures Dad emailed last week? Yes! And DAD they look GREAT! I hate to say I was shocked that you did them, but I was, and they look awesome!

16.   Did you get the 4^th package? It was a letter with all the Blog and emails from the missionaries in our ward. I have gotten all 4. I got that one before I got the one with the hanger and the teeth stuff.

17.   What size leather binder did you want. I don’t know what half size is. 5x7? I think so, but it is for the kind of paper that I wrote my letters on, so when you get that you will know. As far as I can see yes, that's the size of the paper. Like half sheet sized.

18.   Did you like the jam that we sent? Yes! and I was skeptical of pear jam but I LOVE that stuff! 

19.   Do you like your companion? Yes he is great! It's just like anyone, there's always thing that bug you and whatnot, but he is a great guy and i am learning a lot! I love him! He's very positive and helpful and just all around a good guy, he kind of reminds me of Scott Rindlisbacher.

20.   How are you coming with your Spanish? Castillano? Do you get to speak it often? I speak about 50-50 Spanish and English and its coming along. I feel it is slow but everyone else says is pretty fast! My area and Hialeah are the 2 most heavy Spanish areas and they keep telling me that the Lord is blessing me with all of these English speaking people because normally they don't have this many in our area.

21.   What are your P-Day’s like?

a.       You say you are in a hurry every time you write to us so you don’t have time to write a lengthy letter. What are you doing that makes you in such a hurry? I am in a hurry because we only get 1 hour for this and tha'ts why. Most of the day is cleaning, shopping and laundry until about 2, then we go play basketball or frisby. Sometimes I hear they get to go fishing but I haven't been able to yet.

b.      Do you have time to chill at all? What do you do for “free” time? Not really, lunch hour and dinner and the hour we are supposed to have before bed are called personal time and thats kinda relax and enjoy time. P-day it's a bit slower and we do have some more time, the last two we haven't because there was some first week of the transfer stuff to do but today we have a lot of time.

22.   Garret wants to know if you get to watch the Post Season and the World Series at all?;)  He think's that is just as important as General Conference. Nope, I haven't heard anything. I was going to tell him I needed a weekly update, but never got around to it. It's weird though like I have no connection to any of the news or anything, I don't know what's going on at all!

23.   Who takes care of you? An Elder Couple? Who are they? No one. When we need help we call the mission office and they instruct us as best they can. Like yesterday I was super sick and they said drink water, if you're not better by tomorrow I guess it's p-day, so go to the doctor.

24.   Have you made friendships with some of the members in your ward? Kind of, there's some REALLY great members in the ward that make an effort to help us!

25.   Do you remember what October 14^th is? Yes, Garret's Birthday.

a.       Leah’s Birthday Nov 21st (actually Leah's is the 20th)

b.      Mom’s Birthday Aug 15

c.       Dad’s Birthday Jan 21 (and Ryan's is also the 20th)

d.      Tyler’s Birthday Feb 26

e.      GARRET’S BIRTHDAY!!! Oct 14  I wrote him a great 16 year old letter I hoped he had got it. I'm sorry I didn't send it soon enough!

 I have done exactly that in the letters I love you SOOOOO MUCH