This past week has been an interesting one. Between holidays and the World Cup to makes it a little difficult for people to meet with us but we managed haha :) I would say this will probably be a short letter but it will probably be just as long as the other ones. :)
Transfers: my companion elder Hydrick is going to B9 in Madrid to be with Elder Gil (who I trained about a year ago). So he will enjoy that. I'm going to be with Elder Medeiros (from utah). And in 6 weeks I'll be coming home...yikes.
Monday: we went to San Isidro for proselyting. And we got a reference by asking a guy on a phone call for Wi-Fi haha. It was what came to mind and so I asked and he said that he needed to talk to us so he gave us his number. And we gave out a book of Mormon to a Cuban we stopped on the way to the bus stop haha. People are funny. And they like free things. We also saw some familiar faces today, some people we've talked to before.
Tuesday: We came home to hot water! The technician came and it got fixed! At least for tonight, we will see what happens tomorrow. (It is still going strong)
Wednesday: We woke up this morning and then we went to go help Hermano Guzman with moving a bunch of his stuff from a storage unit in his complex to a different storage unit and to his brother's house in (he has to move it because they are doing construction in his complex...reinforcing the structure with steel beams). It took us about 5 trips, 2 to the storage unit and 3 to the home. It was a Chinese buffet. And it was super good. I ate way too much haha. And then we did two loads after eating to finish up and I was dead. I fell asleep in the car and Guzman shouted "cuidado!" (Watch out!) as if we were going to crash haha. We had a fun time with Guzman.
Thursday: We did Pancarta this morning (we used a stand up board with a question written on it, "what makes you happy?" And we asked people to write on it). We saw some familiar faces. And we also had a JW talk to us again and give us a phamplet hahaha. He was the only person who recognized us as Mormons. We had people call us JWs a few times and the best was an english lady who said "look it's the omish-ism" And my companion said hello in English and she got really embarrassed haha. Super super funny. But we saw a bunch of the same people as before. It was kind of interesting. Different day but a lot of the same people passed us.
Friday: weekly planning and English class
Saturday: This morning we went to go play soccer. Felipe, Maria V. and Aurora V showed up. We threw around the football a little bit and taught them how to play 500/jackpot and that was interesting hahaha. It was a very non-competitive game haha. And then Hermana Maria asked a bunch of Chinese young men playing basketball if us 5 could play against them 5. She's amazing. Haha and so they agreed to let us play. We got wrecked at first. And then after they beat us it became a game of who can make the coolest shot haha. And then we made a come back and started drilling some shots (Aurora and Maria made quite a few actually haha and Felipe too). And then we switched up the teams and it was a lot of fun. They spoke a little bit of English and quite a bit of Spanish but most the time they spoke to each other in Chinese haha.
We also missed the bus, ran and missed it again just barely...but it turned out to be a blessing because we made some calls and 2 people picked up that usually don't and we now have a couple of great lessons set up for this week!
I also helped a Russian lady with directions this week haha she was so excited that I spoke a bit of Russian hahaha. But I didn't get very far. We did help her out though. Huge language barrier but if you can make hand gestures and use Google maps it works great haha.
I was studying a talk by elder bednar this week from October 2008 called "pray always" and here are some things that I liked:
"Morning and evening prayers—and all of the prayers in between—are not unrelated, discrete events; rather, they are linked together each day and across days, weeks, months, and even years. This is in part how we fulfill the scriptural admonition to “pray always”"
"After expressing appropriate thanks for blessings received, we plead for understanding, direction, and help to do the things we cannot do in our own strength alone."
"Petitioning Heavenly Father for the blessings we desire in our personal lives is good and proper. However, praying earnestly for others, both those whom we love and those who despitefully use us, is also an important element of meaningful prayer. Just as expressing gratitude more often in our prayers enlarges the conduit for revelation, so praying for others with all of the energy of our souls increases our capacity to hear and to heed the voice of the Lord."
As the scriptures say, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:" (Matthew 7:7). As we ask and seek for answer, we shall find answers and recieve answers to our prayers. We must also understand that sometimes something we see fit for us isn't what Heavenly Father sees that we need. His thoughts are higher and He sees the whole picture. We have a very limited view. But as we use prayer as a way of aligning our will with His will, we will come to see (or continue to see) that Heavenly Father really does love us and will guide us back home. He loves us. He loves you, me, each one of us. And He wants what's best for us. We just need to trust Him and have faith that He will guide us as we ask for His direction. I invite you to pray and seek for answers to questions you may have and use prayer as a time to align your will with God's. Ask for His guidance and help and you will be led. Heavenly Father answers every earnest prayer. Maybe not in the timing that we want but in His timing because He sees best.
Have a great week!
Elder Openshaw
1) you like my fanny pack? It's huge! I didn't buy it though haha
2) super nice car...
3) a funny diagram we found in the moving van haha
4&5) my companion and I
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