I'm in the right place

So this week was different, but first off did a Reverent Beane call you? He is a fellow that we’re friends with and have helped out a little bit and he was like, "WHATS YOUR MOMS NUMBER, I want to call her and talk with her" so I gave him the house phone :) he’s super funny. He’s 87 so if he sounds like he can’t hear you he probably can’t.

So this week we went to a Pentecostal church on Friday. It was something else, it was for Easter and I was just sitting there with my companion like.... we’re not in a Mormon church anymore... haha it was interesting, something that I’ve never been able to go to but it was fun and interesting. I don’t think that I’m going to be going to another one but it was fun to go and sit with the founder of the church and be good friends with him.

I think that this week has been one of the weeks that I have felt the strongest that I was in the right place. So this week was like a super hard week for me, not in a work way but in a way that I was feeling. So this week there were about 2 people that we were teaching that lost their jobs, and one of those 2 found out her son might have Asperger’s. One family we are teaching just found out that their father was in the hospital. It was just like a hard week on a lot of people and for the first time I think that I’ve started to see how God feels for us.

For the longest time down here I think that I’ve always done my best to just love the people no matter what. I’ve tried to think that no matter what the person says to me that I would try and love them as much as I love my family. And this week I feel like I felt the pain of everyone. We have been focused a lot on Jesus this week being that’s its Easter and all, but for the first time in a long time I just sat down and we watched a video about Jesus and everything that he has done for us.

He’s the comforter, the shepherd, our savior. He feels EVERYTHING that we feel. This week I felt like I was right with the people that were going through hard times in their life. I felt so hopeless, that I wanted to do everything that I could for them but I could not do anything with them, I was one of the first times that I just felt sad and kind of beat down. I can’t say how I felt but it was like thinking about someone that I loved more than anything, like mom or dad. And watching them go through one of the hardest times in their life. And just having to sit there and watch.

It tore me to shreds. All this time I’ve been having a great time out here talking with people and getting to know them better and making friends with soooo many people. And then this week just going around and seeing all of these bad things happen to them. It’s something that I never thought was going to happen. It was one of the first times that I was thinking to myself, WAIT, there is something that I can do for them.

Last week was one of the first times that I just got down on my knees and I just cryed to God that everything that was going wrong for these people, my friends, that it would work out in the end. I’ve always thought of  people to pray for when I’m asked to, but this was different. It was like was praying about the person that I loved the most. I didn’t just pray not thinking that anything was going to happen. It was one of the first times that I was thinking, I can’t do anything, and I know that you are the only person that is going to be able to help these people. Please help them! And it was the only thing that I could do for them.

Just yesterday I was able to talk with one of the lady’s that had lost her job. She’s having a hard time this week just doing all sorts of things but she got a job and is able to work, so she’s not just right back to being happy and normal, but everything is going to work out for her. I just can’t even write how weird that it is. It’s like doing something for the first time that you have done before, but this time it works and you are able to help out even if you were not there helping.

Anyway prayer works.  It’s what keeps me going out here all the time. It stinks to think that if I had learned how to pray for reals before I left that it would have helped out sooooo much.:) I’m glad that I was able to learn for myself all that I can do with prayer. I don’t think that I could have learned any other way other than by doing it out of love for the people that are down here. I LOVE ALABAMA :)

I LOVE ALABAMA

I LOVED THE VIDEOS, everyone looks so much bigger! And Thomas is WALKING. CRAZY, it’s good to hear that everything is going good down there. Things are starting to work out for the most part down here. We’re still having some problems with the ward but for the most part things are just getting better and better. The area is super fun, we have started doing a lot of work in some Project houses. The people there are sooo funny. We’re teaching these 2 old people named L and E, another lady named K, and another named H. I love them all so much. I have started to use my cards a lot more to start up some conversations, for the most part it’s just with the kids because if you come up to a door and are like "Hey how ya doing can I show you a card trick?" I think that I might get knocked over from the wind of the door shutting. :)

I have been doing a lot of personal study on my own, to try and find out what I really want to do out here and what I’m going to give 2 years of my life for. I’ve been reading my patriarchal blessing a lot this last month, I just never really put the time in to see what the Lord wants me to do and what he’s telling me I’ll get for helping him out. There’s a part in it that’s been sticking with me hard for the last few months. It goes something along the lines of "you will be blessed with a healthy mind and body to overcome trials that you run into and you will run into a lot of trials for such is the nature that you will live in, in the future" or something like that. And it’s been like really punching me in the face this past week.

We have been having a super hard time with teaching people. TEACHING, we don’t have much problem talking with people but when you start to try and teach them it’s an almost instant turnoff. It’s been kind of getting to me because I know what they can get by trying their best to live how God wants us too. I’ve felt such a difference in my life just as I put forth the effort to do my best, I’ve felt that people are more willing to talk to you if you’re just trying to help them, then if you start off with, "let’s talk about Jesus".

Everyone down here knows about Jesus, the only difference is EVERYONE thinks about him in a different way. It’s like growing up, and all your life you see the sun, and you learn about the sun, so you have an idea of what the sun in the sky is, you just might not know everything about it. Well down here EVERYONE knows about Jesus, some more than others and some what they want to know about him. And EVERYONE has been baptized AT LEAST ONCE; it’s been super hard if you’re trying to have a lesson with someone that already has an idea of what they believe if what you’re teaching is not what they were thinking.

All in all its been really hard trying to teach new people, but some of the people that are Mormon and are just less active it is very nice to be able to go and talk with them for a little and get to know them better. This week we were able to talk with a fellow named Brother B. I have gone over there around 8 times and he’s super interested in coming back to church, but his wife does not like the idea of church so much. Over the last few months she has started to open up A LOT to us, when I first met her she didn’t really want to talk with us at all about anything. But this week when we brought a team-up over to their house. The brother that we brought talked with Brother B and we talked with his wife for about an hour. She is very slowly starting to trust us more and more. There some on the best people that I’ve met in the south so far. :)

This week I was thinking a lot about home, oooo how I’ve missed home, the hours on hours on hours of playing video games and watching anime. It seemed like it was just yesterday that I was back home playing them. But I’ve grown to love being out here. If I could I would to be able to play video games and watch anime out here, but I know that if I did I couldn’t think about the people over here as much as I do. I LOVE THEM. I wish that I could talk with them as long as we had time in the day, but we can’t. After we leave of don’t get to see them for a long time I’m already thinking about when we can go back and visit them. People here are very nice, some of the nicest people that I’ve met. I’m super glad that I was able to come down here and talk with the people that I have and gotten to know them as well as I have. I’m just worried that I might have to leave and go somewhere else. It’s crazy to think that in 3 weeks I might have to go somewhere else.

I was also thinking a lot about district leaders and zone leaders. This week I’m going out with the zone leaders on an exchange. I’m staying here and going out with Elder P. He’s super funny for the little that I’ve talked with him. I was just thinking about how much good you can do as a zone leader or district leader. I wish that I could be one so that I could help out the other missionaries that I’m with. I know it’s cheesy, but I don’t have any problem being out here. I might not know a lot about the gospel, but I’m just happy to be with people and learn with them. I think that too many people over here are thinking about NUMBERS NUMBERS NUMBERS. It’s stupid; wish that when we set a GOAL, we see that it’s something to TRY for. If you don’t get it it’s not the end of the world. I don’t think that I’ve ever gotten all the numbers that we set for the week. I think that most the time we are the lowest. But it’s the people that were seeing. I’m starting to see how us coming over there has started to get people open to talk with missionaries.

I LOVE ALABAMA; I think that I’m going to have to go get a haircut this week. I know that when the sun comes out it’s going to get HOT!!!!! This week it was around 70* I felt like I was on fire, so it’s going to be a long 6 months down here ha-ha.

I LOVE Y'ALL SO MUCH

MISS YA

ELDER LANDIONO ALDANA

Things are going way better with the ward

Things are going way better with the ward. We have really been trying super hard to get with them a lot more and get them engaged in the mission work. We have been getting a lot of members to come out with us and be able to become friends with a lot of our investigators. My new comp is named elder Curtis. He’s GREAT. He also knows Gary Loveless, so that’s kind of funny. He was talking to me like "do you know Gary, someone told me he’s in your home ward" so that was kind of funny.

So this week was SOOOO much fun hahah. We were able to go down to this Baptist church and help out pack some food for kids in Korea. IT WAS CRAZY!!!! There was like 1000 of us and we were in this assembly line type thing. And they had a bunch of music playing on the stage and were packing food for like an hour. And after an hour they add up all of the food that we packed. We packed 111,384,283 meals. CRAZY RIGHT. It was super fun. And the church that we were in was HUGE. All in all it was a great place to be able to help out and meet a lot of people. After that we were able to go help out in another service project putting in a little garden box for an elderly lady. We were there for a few hours and fixed it up super good.

We have not been getting a lot of progression from our investigators this week so we focused a lot on the less actives in the ward. We were able to see 5 families the last few days and each visit we were able to bring someone from the ward out to come see them. It was super nice to have them talking with the ward and just getting back friends with them haha. Speaking of friends I hope that everyone is doing good back there in Utah. It’s been cold down here the last few days ha-ha. It goes from 24 to 70 in a day... CRAZY the weather here just does what it wants.

We don’t have a lot of time today we’re going to a zone activity in about 10 minutes and lunch and all sorts of fun stuff,  but I’ll give you guys some good information on my comp next week and so on.

The next week-

Hey family soooooo last week I wrote a letter but it never got sent because we were in such a hurry to get out and run off so I sent it anyway, but I’ll have to write a new one for y'all so this week was great for the most part haha. On Monday we had a big zone activity where we were all supposed to set goals for this transfer. It was a good activity for everyone to get together and have some fun playing sports mostly volley-ball. it was kind of bitter sweet because we were going over all of the standards of excellence that were like supposed to get as far as like, people that were teaching, lessons that were having this week, and like people that you going to visit as far as members of the ward.

In Columbiana it’s a HARD area. We just got a few new people to the area and they are super sad because they just came from an area where they were used to having around 20 lessons a week and then coming to Columbiana where on a good week we might get 6. It just broke people for the first week. :/ I’m glad that I was able to start here because I’m kind of use to getting the short stick, but like Columbiana is the bomb. It stinks because we don’t get a lot of lessons and when we try to work with the ward all they want to do it just like talk for a little and then go on the rest of the week and not worry about anything else. We were able to have a lot more teem-ups this week with the ward and getting more people to come out with us. When we get people to come out with us most of the time we just go to a less active members home, and we try to get the member and the less active to make friends. It seems to be working I think, and were getting a lot more people to come out with us, so were going to have to keep trying something like this.

We were planning for ward correlation, or where you talk with the ward and the other missionary’s to find out what’s going on in the area. We were thinking that it would be super fun to try and get some activities going on in the next few months. I’m thinking that if we can get something fun going on every month that would be an easy thing for people to invite there nonmember friends to come over to. All in all the mission work is going alright... haha but that doesn’t matter. I love the people in this area.

So this week we were working down in the projects, and we met this lady, and she’s SUPER nice. She has this super funny kid who’s 4. HES CRAZY he runs up and down the projects and into the road so this lady runs after him all around the projects haha. But she’s this super skinny white girl. We started to talk with her just about her kid and like how’s everything going with her. and we had a super good conversation just about everything and like how she had met missionaries before but they kept telling her that like she wasn’t saved, and wasn’t praying right and all sorts of stuff so she never used to talk with missionary’s before.... but we were having so much fun playing with her kid and her for a little bit. And so we left and a few days later came back on a sunny day when they were outside and started talking again.

This time she we were still talking about everything and such and she’s like sooooo what do y'all believe in and such. So we gave her like a super-fast 5 min lesson on like the book of Mormon, she took it and was keeping it away from her kid. She’s sooo funny. She hides it from her kid because she doesn’t want him to draw in it or rip it because she’s watched to many scary movies about bad things that happen if you mess with a bible and stuff haha. She’s super nice, were thinking about going over there some times later this week and having a pie or something and talking about the B.O.M. and trying to see where all she is.

I’ve started to think that one of the reasons that I’m here is because I have never had problems making friends or just getting along with everyone. There’s sooo many people here that smoke and drink and have tattoos, and for some reason like the missionary’s down here don’t like that.. Like their not good people or something :/ anyway I don’t know, but I just like talking with everyone. I’ve found that the people that are drinking and smoking are way funny to talk with and better people to have conversations with then some of the rich people here. They don’t even open their doors for us sooo.

I was reading something in my patriarchal blessing that was talking about life. It went something like, you will be blessed with a healthy body and mind so that you can face the trials in your life, and that there will be many in my future. I was thinking a lot about like how there’s not a lot of mission work to do down here but a lot of people to talk with and get to know. And like it’s just a hard place to be. I just like to think that I’m ready for it and have the right mindset to go into it.

Anyway love y'all hope your all doing good

Elder Aldana

FAVORITE SCRIPTURE???? I couldn’t tell ya. I know that something that I’ve been reading a lot of Alma 48:17. Now I’m not Moroni, but if I could get to talk with anyone in the world ever, it would have to be him. The guy is just a BOSS. One day I hope that we can all be as close to that as possible. I know that if we all were as good as him, I don’t think that we would have come down here. God would have picked us all back up to heaven. It’s good to hear that it’s getting cold down there. I got a letter from the Jenkins. It was super good.

I do hear a little about everyone back home from K. I think that she’s about the only one that writes me from all my friends. She was saying that she was talking with c and c a lot but everyone has kind of just stopped talking with her and all. I hope they’re doing good. It’s been super funny to read everyone letters. ALSO THANKS FOR THE PACKAGE. My companion is getting transferred this week so I’ve been kind of down. We came home last night and just ate the whole bag of Cadbury eggs, and were super down, but we’re doing all better now.

So this week was CRAZY we got 3!!!!! people at church this week. One is this super solid investigator named Carrie-Ann. she’s been super good friends with a member and has wanted to know more about the gospel for a long time. We started teaching her and she’s SUPER INTERESTED. We have got her to commit to baptism but not a date yet . She has 3 super funny little girls. They all came to church and decided that they wanted to be SUPER LOUD. It was so funny. I was sitting next to another investigator but I could hear all of her kids screaming and yelling in the back. It was a good feeling for the ward that was super quiet with no kids.

There is also this kid that we’re teaching. I don’t know if I said anything about him before but he’s AMAZING. His name is K. He’s 16 and is super interested in the gospel. We were teaching him when a friend walked in and the friend was super interested also. And then we tracked into another one of their friends so we’re trying to teach all 3 of them. I know that if one of them makes the first step there all going to follow. Its SUPER Exciting!  We are also working with a RC named  E and R. They have 2 kids. Ones 15 and the other is 12. They live in a trailer home with 15 other people CRAZY RIGHT? But we have been teaching them and just seeing them for a while now.

We have been trying super hard to get them to the temple this month so I hope that that works out for them. The only problem is that we can never get with the bishop to give R the priesthood. But that’s another story. AND THE BEST THING ALL DAY!! This old guy, he’s about 70 came out with us last week, and we were talking about how we were having a hard time getting people to come out with us. HE WAS NOT HAPPY..... So in elders he decided that he wanted to tell everyone in elders that is HOG WASH! And  as Melchesidac priesthood elders we need to get our butts moving.... WE were so scared haha we thought that he was going to kill someone or something but that’s for another time. Its short this week but we are going to go have some ice-cream with R and E, but I’ll send a longer letter home and tell y'all about my new comp next week

LOVE Y'ALL

Elder BUFFALO ROCK