July 18, 2012

Blog Post:
Dear Family and Friends,
The baptism went fantastic! We were able to have it entirely in Spanish. It really was an awesome experience. Our Ward Mission Leader is a fantastic guy who loves to help the missionaries with whatever. I spent most of the rest of that week working hard as usual. We had a ton of lessons set up and a couple of referrals to contact but in the end they all fell through. So, after going to the apartment and looking at the area book we decided to go out and try and re-establish contact with a couple of investigators that hadn't been visited for a while. I found out that time is not relative to distance here. I say that because in order to get to these investigators we had to take an hour long bus ride just to get to the general area and then we had to walk for about 30 min. We may have gotten lost a little on the way but we eventually found it. When we finally got the the addresses we knocked on the doors and to our surprise.....they didn't answer.....One person just wasn't home. The other just didn't want to answer the door. We could see the little eye hole cover slide up....then slowly slide back down. We waited about 10 min to see if she was ever going to answer.....but they didn't.
That's about how the rest of that week went. Sunday was really cool because I got to Confirm Yanilsa (Our investigator) during sacrament meeting. I did the prayer in Spanish. It was really spiritual and after everyone came up to me and said that I did a really good job even though the only word they could recognize was 'Jesucristo' Funnty thing though. We had two dinner appointments. The first was this family that we apparently were suppose to visit after the fourth of July even though we had no warning. So as a result we had Hamburgers and Hot Dogs on American Flag plates. I couldn't tell if the Father was joking with us the entire time or not but he kept on bringing up the fact that we were suppose to visit and eat all their food......I honestly tried to eat all the food but the hamburgers were huge......After that we started talking with the family. The Father was really into cars and things so just as a joke I said that I drove a Mini-Van. He was floored. When he found out that I couldn't remember what type of car it was he said, and I quote, 'ARE YOU A GIRL!?!?!' I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that one. But then I whipped out all the knowledge that I learned from Top Gear and sort of redeemed myself.

The second dinner appointment was with Yanilsa. She made us some awesome Dominican food and this drink that tasted exactly like a melted creamcicle. It was called Morirsonando (which translates literally into "Die Dreaming") It was so good. She was really happy to be baptized and here little daugher (also named Yanilsa) has started talking to us.

Besides all that I've done a lot of contacting. As usual I've met people who just want to fight with us and some people who really want to learn. On guy came up and was really interested then all of the sudden he got this worried look on his face and asked "Wait....do I have to be American to join the Church?" I quickly told him about all the missions and churches in the world. He looked really relieved. Me and my companion also got rebuked the other day but a crazy guy. I'm not quite sure what religion he was part of or if he even was part of a religion, but he definitely believed in God. Anyways, we got rebuked. He dusted his shoes at us and everything then told us that we were going to burn in Hell. It got so intense that another guy came up and started defending us and saying that he should respect opinions and stuff. (He had some pretty interesting theories as well. He didn't agree with us at all, but he was defending us) After that we had some nice people come up and talk to us. Including a philosophy student. I was talking about the Bible and stuff and he told me that he could read Hebrew. That was really cool. He was a nice kid. I offered him a book of Mormon but he declined saying 'I'm not ready yet'.

I love getting letters from you guys. I miss Provo a lot. The other day I was talking to a member and he said that he lived in Provo. I asked him where and he said the 8 words I never thought I would here anyone say in New York, "Do you know where Wills Pit Stop is?" It was a strange feeling of nostalgia.

Well that's the week. The work is really really hard. Me and my companion have talked about it and we have decided that we are not the gathers of this area. We are the planters. The field may not be white and ready to harvest for us but we are going to make sure that we plant the seeds so that it will be white and ready to harvest for future missionaries.

Love you all. Hope to hear from all of you.
-Elder Jeremy Sherman

P.S. I found a vest... :) And I bought it at a place called Goodwill (which is basically just DI) for only $5. Best day ever.

Pictures from Natural History Museum