Email Semanal 21 de enero 2014

1/27/13

Time flies past so quickly, and in the mission it's like a time warp. Elder Perez  the other spanish elder serving here in the area, is going home at the same time in August, and we were talking about how we don't have any time left at all. 4 transfers after this one, and then that's it. It's crazy to think about it, but I really am getting sucked into this time warp which we call the last 6 months. I was talking to an Elder named Elder Lambdin around April of last year and he said the same thing, he was talking about how he was going home in September and how he has like no time left at all, and then next thing that I knew... he went home. It's been a great mission so far, now lets make the last 6 months totally awesome.

This week we had great success, and we nearly (barely almost) made the standards of excellence for the mission. I realized Elder Phillips and I need to work harder on asking for information and a return appointment from people while we contact on the street, and we also need to work on our teaching skills in Spanish.

We had a chance this week to go with our investigator Luis (finally) to a courthouse to receive his license to be married to his wife, in order to be baptized. We went to the Palo Alto courthouse and it didn't work out, because Luis and Cecilia live in East Palo Alto (which is another city) and Palo Alto only does residents stuff. So we found out we had to go to Redwood City to do it, so Luis said we have to do it another day. We showed up to his house the next day and he wasn't there unfortunately. We will still keep trying.

Our investigator Oscar and his member wife Sylvia and doing really well, Oscar wants to be baptized pretty bad, and quite honestly is ready, but he has a pending divorce in Chile that needs to go through. We had dinner with him this past week, and it was really good. I enjoy being them, they have a lot of great stories to tell.

We had Elder Perez with us for 2 or 3 days this week as a trio, his companion was down with President Watkins because he needed to receive knee surgery. His new companions name is Elder Harouny and he's from Utah. That was fun to be in a trio for a few days, we definitely covered a lot of ground while we were all together.

The biggest moment of the week for sure was Saturday. Saturday Elder Phillips went into Elder Perez area with him, and Elder Olsen (one of the travelling assistants to the president) came with me for training and things like this. Elder Olsen is from Utah/ New Jersey and he's Dominican. He's a cool guy. He came into the area to show us how to contact more efficiently for spanish people, and how to invite to meet with us and stuff. He did a lot of training and roleplaying with me, and it really helped a lot. That day we got 12 addresses, and 11 of those said to come back. We got 2 new investigators that day, and it was awesome. It showed me really how to talk to people and invite people in this culture, since i'm not used to this culture in missionary work. Elder Olsen is awesome.

I really don't know what to say besides we really had a really great week this week, we are going to see great things in the next 5 weeks, and I am determined to leave this area better than I found it.

 Well have a great week everyone

Email Semanal 13 de enero 2014

Another hard working week, and the results have paid off, were working up to the standards of excellence for the mission week by week. This week has definitely been a hard one, but I am relieved we got through it, and that it's a preparation day now. So to tell you about this week!

This week was Week 5 of 6 of this transfer, the transfers sure do go by fast. My companion thinks he's going to get transferred and I will train a spanish missionary, but I very highly doubt that. I would rather not do that, but I finished guessing what The Lord wants for his missionaries.

On Monday, we had a pretty good night, we cleaned a lot during the day, and used our dinner in which we didn't have anyone sign up to clean more. President Watkins is doing apartment inspections this week, so we are trying to prepare some before he comes. When I first came to this apartment is was a garbage dump, and I've become a little bit of a neat freak since i've been on my mission, because a garbage dump apartment = bad missionary work. A clean pristine temple like apartment will bring forth more blessings. So, i've been doing a lot of cleaning here and there on the down time of the morning and night. It's pretty decently clean now, but we have to do some still to do. After that we went finding, and we went a visit a less active family that live pretty close to our house here in Menlo Park. They are from Salvador, and it's grandparents in their 50's taking care of their grandson. They are both decently successful in what they do, they are one of the few members that live in Menlo Park in our ward (it's a rather high end area) We were able to eat dinner with them, and have a great lesson on the Atonement and the new year.

On Tuesday we worked super hard to find new investigators, we spent 3 hours+ walking the streets of "Mini Michoacan" finding and contacting lots of people on the street. I'm not used to contacting in spanish, I often stutter over my words, and I often think of the way to say things in Chinese. My mind is very much in Chinese, and I often think in Chinese. No offense to English or Spanish for that matter but it's a superior language. It's great. We were able to have 3 lessons on the street, and able to get a few peoples information as well. After visiting a few people on our list of members and less actives to visit, we headed off to the Ruiz home, i've mentioned Brother Ruiz before in the past but he makes the best food. He's a chef, and a boss. He always has a theme for every one of his meals, so this time it was Italian night. We started off with a mozzarella, heirloom tomato, and lettuce with a vinaigrette on top with a homemade bruschetta with those bottled peppers in oil from Italy on top of the bruschetta. It was really nice, then the main course was a homemade lasagna with everything homemade (I think he even made the noodles?) it was nice, too filling. The drink was a coconut italian soda that was the best coconut drink i've ever had, just delicious. The end was some sort of pan dulce (mexican this time) that they only have once a year (some sort of king holiday on january 6?) and mexican hot chocolate. good way to end the meal.

Wednesday definitely we could have done more, it was a very service oriented day, and we did a lot of that. We should have had more contacts and lessons but we really did try our best.

Thursday we had a Zone Training meeting where we learned of new changes going on in the mission, nothing really too fancy or whatever just changes in taking numbers down at the end of the week. It was a good ZTM. After that we went with the other spanish elders and the polynesian elders to go try this challenge we've been meaning to do for little while, it was the "King of Philly" challenge at the Cheesesteak Shop in Palo Alto. This place is pretty legit and has real Philly cheesesteaks, they have rolls shipped in like every couple days from philadelphia, and they even ship in Tastykake (which I had totally forgotten about until I walked in there last week) it was cool. The challenge is 20 dollars, and it's 2 15 inch cheesesteaks with double meat, large coke, large fry and 1 tastykake, and if you finish all of that in under and hour you get your money back, a picture on the wall (there's only 5 pictures on the wall) and a T Shirt that says "King of Philly" on it. So the Tongan elders decided not to do it last minute because they wanted to eat Hawaiian BBQ instead, but Elder Phillips and I did it (keep in mind elder phillips is like 5"3' and 135 lbs) so I got the cheesesteaks, and the fries, and I went for it. Elder Phillips after 20 minutes of eating gave up, he barely even finished one, and half his fries. Poor guy. But I went at it for the whole allotted time, and I did it. I ate all of it. I can't believe I did, I really can't but I did. I was really super hungry too. I was the 6th person in the past 3 years to do it. Pretty boss, I didn't beat the record time unfortunately, but I did get on the wall of fame. +1 for the church, right? Maybe.

After that, we went with the Tongan elders to give a blessing, they needed to go really quick because the person was in bad condition, so we went on campus to stanford hospital, and we did a quick in and out to give the blessing. We went home, got all ready to go, and headed off to East Palo Alto on our bikes. We ended up meeting a member at a Less actives house who has been drinking a lot, he has 11 kids, and it's just a crazy house. We were able to teach a lesson to people outside of their house... 3 nonmembers just smoking and drinking out there. It was good. After that we went and finally met our promising investigator and his member wife. Oscar and Sylvia. Oscar is from Chile and Sylvia is from Peru. They are awesome! We had our member Jose Hernandez come along, and it was just really awesome. We will set a date for baptism the next time we go by. We also went by Luiz Santos' house that night, and he just came to the door and said "I'll be baptized... when can I be baptized" and we said how about "February 15?" and he said "Great." So really good night.

The rest of the week was really good, and we met our standards of excellence numbers for contacting, Saturday was a crazy day. Elder Barbosa (the other spanish elder in the other area) and Elder Phillips were both sick, so we did an exchange, Elder Phillips and Elder Barbosa together, and then Elder Perez and I, we went and worked in both of the areas, and it was a great day, we did mostly service all day (unplanned acts of service) we helped 2 sets of Sisters fix their bikes, we changes a flat tire that had burst on the side of Willow in EPA, and we just did a lot. We had a great dinner with a recent convert family, and was able to see another recent convert that night named Allan Da Cunha (he's from Brazil). It was just a good day.

By the way, Granny. What I bought with the money you gave me was two new T Shirts (which I LOVE) and a new pair of shoes (the first pair of shoes i've bought on my mission, it's about time!!) 

Hope everyone has a great week, and we'll talk next week.

Elder Nathan Sanchez

6 de enero 2014

Bear with me, this email is more of my goals this year, and the things I have learned last year. Not really much about this week.

1/6/13

Another year has come along in missionary work here in the beautiful California San Jose Mission and it's going to be a doozy. This year has some very lofty goals for the mission, and for the work here in this area. President Watkins has mentioned how this mission should be baptizing a lot less, not the most baptizing mission in California. This mission has 2.2 million people living in it, it contains the most godless city in the United States (that's a fact) Santa Cruz, and the proportion of Hindu and Chinese, the amount of peoples typical workday ending around 8 pm, proposition 8, and all of these things are pointing to this mission not being a mission that baptizes that much, but this past year we had 500 baptisms, more than any mission here, and we are projected to have closer to 800 this next year. I will not be here for all of that but I am surely looking forward to being here until August at least to see how this mission and this hastened work will end up looking like. It would be crazy to be a mission president, we will have to see what lies in store for the mission work in the rest of my life. China will open soon to missionary work, and I wonder what lies in store for me then.

The things I have learned in the past year are many, and are too many to list, but I will try to list them as they come to mind.

I have really learned a lot of patience in this past year, I have had companions where we might have no always been on the same page, and sometimes there needs to be a certain degree of righteous anger that comes into play. I love that scripture "reproving betimes with sharpness" and then afterwards comes with an increase of love. I definitely love that scripture. This has been a year where I definitely have learned hard work, yes there is times where I'll fall asleep during study time, or something other but I have seen hard work pay off in this past year. I have realize what a waste of time media can be in peoples homes, I am now looking from the inside out on what a waste of time these things can be. I have not fully decided on whether video games will be in my future at all or not, but I feel like at the very least video games and maybe in fact movies and television will be severely limited in my post mission life. It's just such a time waster. I have seen major miracles in my life in the use of time wisely, whether it be with my Chinese and spending countless hours studying sentence structure, characters and slang in Chinese, and everything in between (my slang is pretty up to date, not that that matters much here in the field though).

I have learned that rules are rules, and obedience is obedience. There isn't a middle ground in the gospel, that is, that when we break a rule, we lose blessings, and we sadden our Heavenly Father. I am not the perfect missionary in any sense of the word, I don't want anyone to think that I am absolutely just perfect in every aspect, every missionary has weaknesses, but I have seen that the more close to being exact, the better off we are. Now this is a shout out to Mom, but this is a scripture that I enjoy very much, and I know I was not a very good kid growing up, and it shows a lot in the way my mom and dad raised me, and they raised me well.

 21 Yea, and they did aobey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them; and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their bmothers had taught them.

(Alma 57:21)

I remember speaking at stake conference priesthood meeting about my mission call here to this mission, and President Dunford got up and introduced me to the congregation (mom unfortunately you weren't there) but he started crying a little bit and said how grateful he was for you two for the way you raised me, and I appreciate it that very much. That is also something I am very grateful for in this new year, is that I might not have had a perfect childhood, but I know what is right because of it, and that's all that matters.

Now onto my goals, this is only a small tidbit of what I have learned this year, but here are my goals.

My goals for this year are lofty, and are really aimed towards who I am as a person and who I want to be. I want to go home with the best Chinese I can possibly have by the end of a two year mission, and I have set more specific goals, with reading, writing, and speaking in order to reach these goals. I will know more than 4000 characters by the time I go home (I know around 2000 now...) and I will get through my list of vocabulary words that I have written down in lessons, and during talks and things (it's a lot... I hope I can get through it and learn all of the words) and most importantly I think my accent still has tweaks here and there that I can work on, being in the Spanish program isn't helping much, but I am definitely working hard when I do have time to study Chinese to work on that. Generally Chinese people are honest, and being around a bunch of Spanish missionaries they ask "well how is his Chinese?" and a lot of the time they say perfect, but I really hope they don't mean that, because it is far from perfect, I still have years of work to do on it. We went to service the other day, and there was a chinese lady that worked at this senior home in Palo Alto and I found she is from Hebei so I started talking to her, and just doing little conversation here and there, and then Elder Perez was curious and he asked "How does he sound, is it good chinese?" and she said "If I closed my eyes and he was just speaking to me, I would find it hard to tell if he was American" so that tells me a little bit about where I am with the language. I still have a while to go.

Spiritual goals are always super important. One of my biggest goals by the end of the year/end of my mission is to be free of getting into ruts, no habits, no nothing to this extent. I know exactly what I need to do, so I do it, regardless of habits, or anything that I'm used to. I think that's something I have learned from my mission a lot is that "I do what I ought to do when I ought to do it, no matter what" That's not to say that i'm perfect at that in any way, but it's a principle that I have certainly learned while out here. Another spiritual goal I have is to be more versed in the scriptures, especially the New Testament. I made it a goal to read the whole New Testament by the end of my mission, and I am currently in 2 Corinthians 1, so I'm not too far off. I also would like to get through the Book of Mormon once more (I read super slow, I used an institute manual to study, and I do a lot of cross referencing and highlighting, it's a laborious slow process but worth it)

So these are some of my goals for this year, just pushing these last 7 months to do everything I can to make it count. This past week has been a pretty good week, the weeks go by too quick, and I've been here in the spanish program almost a transfer. According to President Watkins I'll be put back into Chinese on March 4th, and it looks like I'll be with Elder Butcher again in Pleasanton. I'm pretty excited for that, Elder Butcher is the best.

Anyway so this past week! We got a new investigator on Thursday, that was really cool, she is living with less active members, she's 20 years old. She has met with missionaries before and knows what we are about generally. We are excited for that, we have an appointment this next Sunday with her.

I had an opportunity this week to go on exchanges as well, I went with Elder Barbosa. Elder Barbosa is from Garden Grove, CA. He's a recent convert to the church of about a year and a half. He's been on his mission since August. I get along with him really well, he's become a really good friend of mine along with Elder Perez as well. There's those people that you meet on your mission that you know will be your friends long after the mission and these people definitely will. The exchange went really well, and we had a lot of fun. We were able to have 2 lessons and make a few contacts here and there with really promising people. 

All in all, it's been a good week. Increasing our lesson each week, so hopefully we can hit 17 this week. I'm praying that my spanish continues to improve, it still needs a lot of work.

 I love you all, and I hope all of you will set both spiritual and other goals for yourself, may I remind you that the year has past and we need not go back to the bad things that happened in the past, move on. That's why the Atonement is there.

I'll end my email with one of my favorite scriptures, it's from the Doctrine and Covenants.

 42 Behold, he who has arepented of his bsins, the same is cforgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.

D&C 58:42

Elder Sanchez