Another week of the mission down. And I’m
going to start this letter by going back to last week.

Last Monday, we had a free P-Day. Usually we do an activity with the 12
other missionaries in our Zone, but the first week of every month we have
free to do what we want. We decided to meet up with our District at our
Pensionista’s house, eat lunch together, and watch a movie. Since our
District is 4 gringos and 2 Latinos we got to pick a fun Disney movie and
not some strange Latinos movie. We picked Megamind and got to watch it in
English! (We had Spanish subtitles for my companion and the other Latino)
It was so funny! We (the gringos) had been wanting to watch it for forever
because it’s hilarious, and we finally got to. Lunch was good. We had some
chicken and rice and something else (I don’t know exactly what it was).
Then we had ice cream, which was really good and a nice treat. And while we
were watching the movie we had some soda and cookies. It was an awesome
P-Day. Then we went out and played some Fronton afterwards. It’s basically
tennis, but you play it against a wall instead of over a net. We don’t know
the rules, but we had fun just hitting the ball back and forth.

Then during our FHE appointment, we taught the lesson. I decided to talk
about goals, like we do at home the first week of the New Year. It went
well, and we all set some goals that we’re going to work to achieve this
new year.

Then Tuesday we went to an area of our Zone to help them contact some of
their references because my companion is the District Leader. We had a
little bit of success there. Then we came back and taught our
investigators. We taught a good lesson to an investigating family of 8.
They haven’t come to Church yet, but we think that they will. It would be
so awesome to be able to baptize the whole family together and help them to
find the happiness that the Gospel brings. We also taught Jonathan, who
will be baptized this week on the 17th. He’s the son of one of our
investigators, and he’s been coming to Church and progressing great.

On Wednesday, we jumped on the wrong bus and got lost for a bit. That was
fun. We back tracked, got on the right bus, and got back to work. We still
don’t understand why the bus we got on went where it did. It looks exactly
the same as the bus that goes where we wanted it to go. And then we saw
this same bus on a different street that isn’t even close to the normal
route. So yeah, we have no idea where those buses go. We were also visiting
a recent convert and asked her when her birthday was. It turned out to be
today, well not today, but Wednesday when we asked her. We called the
Bishop to let him know, and he said we were having a party for another
member and she was invited. We celebrated the 2 birthdays together.

Thursday we had training from our leaders because it’s a new month. I’m
hoping that this month we’re able to get a lot more work done. We haven’t
been slacking off or anything, but there’s always room to improve and more
lessons that could be had. We also found 3 new investigators. They were
working out in their yard (more or less. They were working on the dirt
trail that leads up to their house) and called us as we were walking by.
Apparently some missionaries had contacted them over a year ago, but they
had been busy and had some health issues, so they couldn’t receive the
lessons. We talked to them a bit, offered to help with their trail, and
ended up teaching the Restoration to her and her 2 daughters. They weren’t
able to come to Church this week, but we’re going to keep visiting them and
hopefully we’ll see the fruits of the seeds those missionaries planted way
back when.

Friday afternoon we made some pancakes with some less-actives in the ward.
They had a nice Teflon-coated pan, so the pancakes didn’t stick and cooked
perfectly. That was awesome. They were the best pancakes I’ve made so far
in the mission.

On Saturday, we had some real high goals set and were ready to meet them.
We didn’t, though. There is always something that gets in the way. For
instance today, we were getting ready to leave for our first lesson of the
day and a member calls us asking for help with her move. She doesn’t live
with her husband and just has a daughter, and we knew they needed help, so
we went to help them instead of going to our lesson. The lesson wasn’t
planned with the people, they weren’t waiting for us or anything, but the
service threw off our whole schedule. Something like that always happens.
If we taught all the lessons we wanted to each day, we’d have super high
numbers, but something always comes up.

Yesterday, we went to a meeting with our bishop and the priests in the ward
preparing for their missions. We had a real good discussion about why we
need to service mission and about obedience to the commandments. Obedience
is all about our faith. We also watched a talk that Elder Holland gave to
missionaries in the MTC. I had seen it before, but I enjoyed watching it
now as a current missionary.

Our bishop also gave us a cool analogy of missionary work. He compared it
to someone and their farm. There is this farm owner who has a huge farm. He
wants to take care of it and help it grow, but there’s just so much of it
that he can’t do it on his own. Therefore, he askes for help. And because
he’s the owner, he’s going to care more for this farm than anyone of the
workers. He’s going to do everything he can to help his farm grow, and if
one of the workers asks him for something to help the farm, obviously he’s
going to give it to him. This is the same with missionary work. This is the
work of Jesus Christ. He’s the owner. He cares about this work more than we
ever could, but there’s so much of it that he needs our help. And because
he wants his work to be done, if we, the workers, ask him for something,
he’s going to give it to us. We have the help of the Lord in this work
because it is his. He will make sure that it is done correctly and that we
have all the help we can have. He will teach us, lead us, guide us, and
instruct us so that we can do the best work possible for his farm. It’s
similar to the Lord and his vineyard in Jacob 5, but I liked how our bishop
extended it to talk about the help that we’ll receive from the Lord in the
work.

I don’t have any pictures this week because we didn’t do anything real
exciting. The snow on Misti has all melted, so I couldn’t get a picture of
that. It was mostly melted by the time we left Internet last week. I should
have some pictures next week, though.

Thank you for your emails and prayers!

-Elder Kehoe