Elder Sluder's Mission Blog: Continuing Challenges in 33

12/13/2010

Dear Family,

Another week has gone by and to be honest I’m glad it’s over. I’m really trying not to be a negative person, but I will say that it was an extremely long, hard week. Then yesterday our end results were really nothing. We had one investigator come to church for about 15 minutes. She said she just didn’t feel good in the chapel and decided to leave. It was heart breaking!!! My companion and I were planning on baptizing 7 this month and as of right now, we would need a miracle to baptize even one. I’m extremely worn out and feel that we have gotten nowhere. We also didn’t have any baptisms in the zone this week. We actually planned to have two baptisms in a branch named Central. On the day of the baptism, the mother showed up and refused to be baptized and also refused to let her daughter get baptized because in a dream, a "SPIRIT" told her that the church wasn’t true. Go figure!!

We had rain storms galore this past week. I’m sending you some pictures from Saturday afternoon right after we had a rain storm. The other pictures are of me and my companion last week in the mission home for zone leader council, in front of the Christmas tree. And the last photo is of Me, Elder Gurr, my companion, and Elder Dominguez from Panamá. They both live with us. Elder Gurr is from Orem, UT. Last April in General Conference, Tomas S. Monson spoke about his family and his little brother Jason who died when he was 15. A picture of Elder Gurr opening his mission call at the side of his little brothers bed in the hospital and everything was shown in General Conference. Elder Gurr’s name is Kyle, so if you want to read the Liahona (Ensign), you’ll find out a little more. I know the story pretty well myself. Elder Gurr is a pretty cool kid and we talk a lot because he´s the only one in the house to practice English with.

Overall, I’m doing pretty well. This next little bit should go by super fast. On Friday, we have the Christmas mission conference in Montevideo. The next week is Christmas and the following week we will have changes. I’ll go to Montevideo again and the week after that I have another zone council in Montevideo. It will be busy! We shall see what miracles God has prepared for us here in 33. It’s been quite a trial. I can’t really explain it all in a letter, so when you guys finally see me, I’ll tell ya all about it. Mom thanks for the Idea of the Christmas activity. I would love to do it. The problem is that they have already planned the Christmas party and we had no say in the matter. They planned it for the 17th, the same day that we are going to be in Montevideo for our Christmas conference. Perfect huh? We can’t even participate in our own dang activities. Thank you for the suggestion mom!

With my health, I really don’t think that I have a parasite. I have gotten very sick, but I can honestly say that I’m skinnier because I have lost the appetite that I had as a teenager and I don’t eat as much. I also ride a bike 30 to 40 kilometers daily in the summer sun or if my bike doesn’t work, I usually walk at least 20km. I feel quite healthy and I believe it’s because I’m actually not eating fast food every day and that I try to eat healthy always.

Well all of this has brought me to my last point. This morning while reading in Nephi, I came to a great realization. Nephi had two great plans to get the plates. He tried both, but both times they did not succeed. Then the third time, God did his part and delivered Laban into Nephi’s hand to kill. It was the thing that God wanted, but at first Nephi didn’t want to do it. We have a very similar situation. We have had many great plans to change 33. So far none of them have worked. So now, we are waiting to see what it is now that God will put into our hands to fix the problem. I know that I’m not going to want to do it at first, but my companion and I are slowly figuring this thing out. (I just hope God doesn’t deliver the branch president into my hands - Joke) Ha Ha Ha........

Well I love you all. I’m happy and still alive.

I will talk with you shortly… until then

LOVE ELDER JOHN SLUDER