Well family and friends another week has come and gone, this week for me was pretty laid back, much more so than for you guys. But it was a good week. This week was international family week (in case you hadn´t heard) so every day there was some sort of activity focused on the family. Which was way cool. On Friday there was a Stake activity where they gave some award to the highest military official in El Salvador, I got to shake his hand, and he said "wow what a firm handshake!" NBD. They had told us that it was a talent show and so as a zone we prepared the first vision hymn but sung it to the tune of "come though fount" which turns out really good. But they announced that we were singing some hymn about the family, which they had never told us about. The stake presdient gave us a funny look but we just sung what we had prepared.
This week we finally got to visit and meet with the bishop to try and build a better relationship with him. Some of the Elders before had done some stuff to tick him off and apparently they had lost his trust. But my hope is to get it back again and start working more with the ward. In this area it is basically useless to street contact because 1 people are only working here, but live far away or 2. aren`t interested because they are too busy playing on their ipad, etc.. So we are going to try to keep looking for people but our best hope is to work with the ward leaders, and less active members. All starting with the bishop. Hopefully it will give fruit
This week we started teaching A, the girlfriend of an RM, she is pretty positive, she has been attending church for like 5 or 6 months now but the missionaries only visited her once. We had a family home evening that went okay, and we have an appontment for this Thursday. She is studying medicine so she doesn`t have a ton of time, but we have our fingers crossed and are hoping for the best. The baptismal date with F fell because of some legal issues, she had some problems with her mom and is now living with her grandma and aunt who are members. But they don`t have legal custody yet so they can`t give permission for her to get baptized. Really it never should have been counted as a baptismal date but when I got here they had already reported it. We are going to keep working with her so that in a few months when everything settles down she will be totally ready. The good news is that a less active family that we have been working with came back to church yesterday! It made me happy to know that we are doing something right. There are many more families we are working with and hope thay they too can come back and enjoy the blessings that come from keeping the sabbath day holy.
This morning we woke up and started praying, when we heard a loud BANG! We ran to the window to see what happened and later left the house to see what had happened. A squirrel had gotten shocked by the High voltage power lines and had shorted out the whole network for our colonia. It even exploded a transformer about half a block away. Poor little guy, we found him and he was pretty darn fried, all black from being burnt. But right now we don`t have power in the house so that's a bit of a bummer. Oh well. Well it`s good to hear that you are all doing well and having fun Congrats to Eli and Shih-Ping for their marriage, and Anna for almost being done with high school! Have a good week and I will talk to you all on monday!
Elder Schriever
