Week 53: Elder Vinson, Tougher then Geocaching & Family History Work

So this week we actually got to talk to Jeff.  I was diagnosed with breast cancer & wanted to tell him via the phone rather than an email.  We contacted the mission president & he offered to have the senior couple serving in the area to help us contact him.  After his church, they invited him to their house.  Once they arrived they handed him the phone & told him to call us.  We thought he'd call after our sacrament meeting, but he called right after the taking of the sacrament.  Gratefully Ben had taken this possibility into consideration & saw the call come in.  We jumped up & went out to the car to chat with him.  He was nervous obviously, but then handled it with faith.  He asked a lot of scientific/health related questions, then as a good missionary, he had complete faith that all would work out & we'd all learn something from the experience.  He was supportive & kind.  He fasted for me  a couple weeks in a row & said he prayed continually.  He's a great son.  Love him!

This week like many has flown by! It wasn't anything super crazy but it was fun. I still don't have a companion so I have been with members all week. Recently I have received a list from the branch here of less actives. We are trying to locate them but that is hard. In this country the streets are not organized. They have names but no one knows them & I don't have a smart phone with Google Maps so it makes it tougher then geocaching. I have found a couple that have moved, died, or just don't want to listen. I found a couple people to teach but they aren't crazy good. The week passed by fast because we worked hard and it was fun being with different members all day. Some who are  preparing to leave on missions which is fun. The most helpful thing I would say I did was teach how to do family history work to some recent converts that plan on going to the temple here in September. I gave them the little booklet to fill out but for them its hard in the sense that they don't even know their parents to well. Also everyone has like two parents and 15 brothers and sisters. There isn't much to do here for fun so they find there ways.

Elder Varela which is an Elder from the other part of my area with which I live with also goes home here on Wednesday. That also means there is transfers, or change of missionaries. I will be the new district leader here in Barahona and my new companion is Elder Vinson from Utah. He is actually from my same group so he has the same time as me here in the country. The other companionship in the house is going to be the same Elder Casco but he will be training a new guy so we don't know where he is from. There has been a lot of changes in this transfer but it will be fun to see what happens. That's all I have for this week so take care and have another good week before school starts!

Elder Wolfe

Barahona, Dominican Republic