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
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