Letter From Rhys - Week # 21 - Mission Trek!

Republika Dominicana, the gospel frontier.  These are the voyages of the Missionary Elder Wheeler. His two-year mission, to find new investigators and baptize converts. To discover new foods, and to boldly cook what he has never cooked before!

Captains Log #22 Star date 01.08.18:

Feliz Lunes from the tropical land of the Republica Dominicana!

This week we have had a very fun week!  Starting last Tuesday, my companion Elder Portillo, and I had a very awesome day when we made the appointment to marry the family of one of our investigators!!!!!  YAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!  This Family, is the same one who had recently lost their newborn daughter to the ways of this world... death... if you didn’t already know.

Over the course of this last week, this family´s faith has increased so much, it’s a miracle!  We also had the opportunity to talk with more people this week and we have found a few more investigators with great potential, who are prepared to make the necessary covenant of baptism!  However, out here there are a lot of people who are unwilling to go to church... mostly because apparently the pastors of all the churches out here forbid members of their congregations to attend other churches.

Though their intensions as pastors may be pure, their inhibiting a person’s ability to choose is a thing that they aren’t really able to do.  The Lord gives us the ability to choose that we may learn from our own experience the good from the evil and when we take that ability to choose away, we are prohibiting the people to learn and to grow.  Now there is a difference between restricting what we can do, and teaching us what we should or shouldn’t do while maintaining the integrity of our freedom of choice.  But I won’t talk more on that subject because that’s a lengthy topic and I don’t have the time to do so.

Anyway, on Wednesday we contacted a few people using the Book of Mormon and found a member who has been inactive for 12 years.  Over the last week we’ve done our best to make sure her needs are met to help her reactivate, which is what she wants to do.

Thursday, we had our usual District Meeting and afterwards we went to the area of Ozama for a cosecha!  The cosecha was tough.  Not many people wanted to talk with us though we were able to find a couple of pearls of great price.  Afterwards, we returned to our area to go to the temple with the ward.  We had a couple of investigators show up who were wanting to come with us which was fantastic!  Sadly, without telling us, the ward cancelled our trip to the temple and we had to send our investigators home.

On Friday, nothing exciting happened really as far as proselyting is concerned – a lot of our appointments fell and we spent a lot of time trying to get references from members and talking with our converts.

However, I had some interesting experiences cooking.  Friday, I had no food but pasta in the house for me to eat.  Before returning to the house Friday afternoon for food and study, we stopped by the store and I bought what I though was pasta sauce.  However, it was double concentrated tomato paste... And since I had to make do with what I had, I made pasta.  Let’s just say it didn’t turn out so well and I couldn’t take more than a few bites before losing my appitite.

Saturday, the day before Fast Sunday, for lunch I had pasta again but this time I tried something a little different.  I, with my limited imagination for cooking, tried to make angel hair pasta! but without the parmesan seasoning.  It turned out a little better than my previous failure the day before but it didn’t quite work, because I put in way too much butter and I realized that the purpose for the butter is for the seasoning that comes with the delicious boxed Pasta Roni!

I had started my fast as well that afternoon after eating, but because I’m stupid and was afraid of offending investigators when they offered me coke and oranges prepared especially for us, I broke the said fast... Well don’t fret, we were able to make up for it the next day by just skipping breakfast and lunch on Sunday.  We didn’t end up eating or drinking anything until 8 pm that night because of our busy schedule but all turned out well.

A Family in our ward invited us to family home evening and I was able to try a food that’s based in Arabia.  Then last night when we returned to the house, I had the brilliant idea of cooking the family favorite, ham steaks, with the ham that we bought the day before.  It was really good but we didn’t have anything to counteract the sweetness of the meat and so we couldn’t eat too much of it.

Then there’s today!  We had a zone activity and each district brought a food specific to their country.  Obviously since it was a district activity Elder Chu accompanied us.  He’s such a ladies man though.  Some of the Hermanas are big fans of Elder Chu and so they were taking a lot of pictures with their cameras none of which I got... sorry guys!

Any way that’s the end of our adventures this week folks. I hope you all enjoyed your New Year’s and have gotten off to a good start with all those resolutions! Catch you Later!

Going forth with the vision of Christ and an eye of faith,

Elder Rhys Wheeler.

P.S. Mom typos please. Thanks!