Letter From Rhys - Week #11 - We are Farmers Bum - pa - dum. bum - bum- bum - bum!

Feliz Lunes from the Tropical Island of Republica Dominicana!

This Week was a whooooole bunch of Crazy!!!!!!  So Monday was your standard P-day:  get up, work out until my companion kills me and drag my feet back to the apartment.  Afterward we went to Agora Mall with Elders Dayton and Malone. These guys are cool, BTW.

Elder Dayton is our Zone Leader and Elder Malone came with me on the plane on my first day, so we’re pretty close.  Anyway, this is where I had the chance to eat the awe fantabulous WENDY'S!!!!!  It was super awesome!  I got a huge frosty for only 100 pesos! (about $2 US)  Also, we had the pleasure of walking past a Maserati dealership.  It was pretty cool.

Anyway, Tuesday, was awesome, but not as interesting as the next day!  Here's where the amazing title of this letter comes in.

In this mission, we don’t set goals; we make promises.  This has everything to do with the concept of the Eye of Faith.  The Eye of Faith is where a person has so much faith that an event is going to happen that it’s as if it has already happened.  An example is like those stories in the Book of Mormon and the Bible.  People have soo much faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that they were forgiven of their sins even though the suffering in Gethsemane hadn’t happened yet.

Our promises, uses this concept that if we try our hardest and do our part, the Lord will do His and those promises are already fulfilled when we make them.  Anyway, we had a promise that every companionship would baptize this month and there were some who still hadn’t baptized.  So Wednesday through Saturday we had Cosechas (or Harvests) every day.

Basically, a metric crap ton of missionaries travel to one area and proselyte, inviting every person we talk to to baptism and to read the Book of Mormon.

On Wednesday, we went to the Las Americas zone and San Pedro. We spent 4 hours or so proselyting in those areas and it took all day to do it.  There was also a Cosecha on Thurday after our weekly District meetings from 4 to 8.  Because Elder Smith and I had to go to Maquiteria for intravistas  (interviews), we also ended up doing our weekly planning in the apartment of our friends Elder Ferufino and Elder Sandoval. (Note:  weekly planning usually take 2 hours or so.)

For two straight days we could not work in our area.  Then there's Friday!  Cosecha number 2 or 3 depending how you look at it. 

This Cosescha, we ended up riding in a car for a solid 5 or 6 hours LOL.  We went back to San Pedro this time and were going to make a stop in a more compo (or field like) area called Los Llanos.  We, neither the two office Elders, Elder Maglbey and Elder Millburn, knew how to get there...Well, let’s just say because of this we found ourselves driving in circles with 8 people crammed into a 5 person Isuzu truck!

The road that it was wanting to take us down was finally found by us, but to our luck, it was private property and we could not pass!  And so... another 2 hours later, it’s about 6 pm at this point, we finally arrive in Los Llanos.  We do an hour of proselyting and then get back in the truck for another hour and a half drive back!  I should probably mention that both times I had at least 170 extra pounds in my lap both ways 😂😂😂😏.

Once again, another day had come and gone and we still had not worked in our area.  It was kind of sad at this point too, because there were people and appointments we had to blow off for this cosecha...😏.

Saturday came so quickly, too.  That morning we stopped by one of our investigator’s, Licelotte, who was getting baptized that day!  YAAAAY another baptism!!!  We also walked around talking to every single investigator we had, and invited them to come to the service.  We did have success in that regard because our investigator, Ivan, came to the baptism. 

Cool stuff right?  But we ended up showing up 30 min late with Licelotte because she forgot!!!!! and wasn’t ready!!!!!!! (Temporally, not spiritually)  The service went well, though the drain of the font wasn’t working so we had to plug it with a plastic bag... We also had half as much water as there was supposed to be which made things difficult! But we also had an 8-year-old being baptized as well and so we had a lot of membership attendance, and because it was his birthday, there was CAKE!!!!!!! YAAAAAAY!!!!!!!

That night we drilled politely into Licelotte’s head that being on time for church the next day was very important.  To cut a long story short, and much to our surprise, she was at church 15 min early!!!!!  YAAAAAAAY once again!!!!! 

The Lesson here folks is that if we do our part in the Lords work, he will do his!  Also, that missionary work is important!  We are the Soul Insurance Agents [thus the title of this email] helping all to save money and their souls during the days of trial ahead! 😉

Well, I'm out of time and that’s all I have to share this time around.  It was an honor and a privilege writting you all!

Elder Wheeler

Going forth with the Vision of Christ and an Eye of Faith!

P.S. MOOOOOOOOOOOOOM Thanks for the typo correction!