The Uncontactable Ikea

Dear family and friends,

 

          This week was fairly good with a lot of unexpected twists. For one we have a new zone leader named Elder Catlett. He's a lot like Elder Sheets, meaning that he's super goofy, personable, and he's fun to be around. Elder Adona and I were scared that Elder Sheets' replacement would be some stiff guy who'd be anal but Elder Catlett has proven to be a worthy successor of the legacy Elder Sheets left behind. 

 

          Nobody got baptized this week. I guess I wasn't clear on that. The baptism(s) will be happening this Saturday. Not only will we be baptizing Eric Bailon, but we'll be baptizing Edward's girlfriend, Ikea, this upcoming week. Ikea's been disappearing on us a lot and one day we went to visit Eric and she was there, instead of him. She's ready to be baptized, she just disappears and is uncontactable. Anyway she passed her interview last night so she's good to go. 

 

          We've been gaining a lot of trust with the members in the ward which is really good news although we have a long way to go. It's been really wonderful to get trust from the members.

 

Well my time's about up.

 

Love,

 

Elder Boothe

Smooth as a Boothe

Dear family and friends,

 

                 Elder Sheets, one of the zone leaders I live with, is preparing to board a flight home. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Elder Adona and I are mourning his loss. We really liked him a lot and we made an enormous amount of happy memories together. Forutnately Elder Adona has his address so I can write to Elder Sheets after e-mailing you all. We took a lot of "apartment pictures" yesterday, most of them were goofy. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera with me so I won't be able to get the pictures over to you until next week. Elder Sheets gave me a brown suit which fit me perfectly! Everyone in our basement was saying "Smooth as a Boothe" so I'm definitely keeping it. Besides I've been looking for another suit since I only have one and it gets dirty a lot. 

 

                  Today is transfer day but I still don't have any news yet of whether I'm being transferred or not. I wish we e-mailed after we got transfer news so we could tell you whether or not we're being moved. We had zone conference on Tuesday which was very refreshing. Sister Taylor gave us all budget sheets and gave a lot of really helpful advice about buying things and all that. I know what you're all thinking right now "Yes! He's learning budgeting skills! YAY! Elder Boothe you're learning valuable budgeting skills this is going to help you for the rest of your life!" Trust me I get it. I do feel like I'm smart with my money since I have a lot of money left over by the end of the month. 

 

                  Unfortunately Elder Adona and I are in another finding slump. Our investigators are either being baptized, dropped or they simply don't pick up the phone or call back. Things are looking a little better though. Eric, Edward's younger brother, just passed his baptismal interview on Sunday so he's good to go for the baptism, assuming that we maintain daily contact with him this week. Eric's baptismal date is for February 29th. Edward's former girlfriend Ikea is getting baptized on March 3rd, which is the next Saturday after this one. 

 

                   Not much else to report. I guess you'll find out next week if I've been tranferred or not.

 

Love,

Elder Boothe

Hiking, Edward, and Spanglish

Dear family and friends,

        The highlight of my week is that WE HAD A BAPTISM! BOMBA DIGUIDAD ABUELA! That's Bomb diggity translated into Spanish. I wonder how Ryan feels about this. I figure that he'd appreciate it since it's Spanish translation. The zone leaders and I have a lot of fun with Spanish and I say "Bomb diggity" a lot so we had some more fun.

        Anyway the investigator we baptized is Edward Bailon who is the son and brother of the first two investigators that I've baptized in this area. He's very shy and very soft spoken but he's sincere and he has a heart full of gold once you get to know him. He initally avoided the missionaries who taught his dad and when we first started teaching him back in December it was hard getting him to open up to us. It's been amazing watching him open up to us and seeing that glow about him. The gospel has truly changed his life and what's better is that he can see it. The guy who baptized him is his home teacher, Noel, who is a recent convert of about 5 months. Getting his baptism organized was extremely stressful but once it happened it happened. Satan threw a lot of last minute obstacles at us (he's good at that). What was even cooler is that during priesthood meeting the next day Brother Santiago, the second counselor in the bishopric, asked Edward to give his conversion story to everyone and in it he thanked me and Elder Adona "for being patient with him". He also talked about the huge change this has made in his life. It was such a spiritual experience and it's freakishly awesome! I'll never forget that moment, even if I don't recollect everything he said exactly.

       Right before e-mailing everyone I had a zone activity which involved hiking up to a mountain and having a testimony meeting. It was very fun and I enjoyed it. The testimony meeting was spiritual, especially Elder Sheet's testimony on our purpose as missionaries. I took three videos of that experience. I wish I knew how to upload them.

     So this upcoming transfer is coming to an end soon and one of the zone leaders that I live with is going home. I'm going to miss that guy a lot! I've become rather attached to the missionaries in this zone and we've had a lot of fun together. It's going to be sad having to say good-bye to him. Another reason why I'm saying this is that next week's e-mail will come on Tuesday, instead of Monday.

Love,

Elder Boothe

Croissant Sandwiches and No Smoking

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of reason, it was the age of folly..."

         Okay so does everyone get the point? This week's had it's ups and downs with the week ending on a lot of downs. There was a really exciting experience that happened on Wednesday:

              We had an appointment with Angelica and we're reading 2 Nephi 30 when we ask her how her smoking and other problems were. This was Day 6 of the 1 week stop smoking program and so far it seemed to work so we're hoping that she's still okay because honestly I was afraid that she was going to relapse. Her words were, and I quote:

         "I'm done. I'm done with everything that's bad for me."

        Elder Adona and I were shocked. Our mouths were hanging open. We were speechless. Happy, but speechless. We're still happy and speechless about the whole thing. Six days prior to that she wouldn't sign her "Declaration of Independence" (that's part of the stop smoking program. It's her commitment to God that she'll never smoke again) because she didn't want to make a commitment to God and then mess it up. I was pretty frustrated throughout the lesson primarily because she was extremely stubborn throughout the whole thing and almost everything went wrong. So anyway, the stop smoking lesson had a really rocky start and Elder Adona and I are chomping at the bit about her and then six days later from that she just gave all that up as if it were nothing. Mind you cigarettes aren't the only thing she's addicted to. In addition to that she also has no job and lives in a place where drugs and cigarettes are in abundance and everybody else in her family violates the Word of Wisdom without a second thought. For her to be around all that and not succumb is pretty amazing! She also told us that we had a pretty big impact on her mom because her mom is going to a therapist about quitting smoking. Then Angelica told us yesterday that she's planning on moving. We're not sure if she's serious or not. We're crossing our fingers that it's a joke but we're not counting on it. She's made so much progress that sometimes it still blows my mind. She's on probation though for another year and a half so she's not getting baptized anytime soon. At least she's doing everything else right.

       We also have a baptism coming up! His name is Edward Bailon and he's the son of Zenaido, who was the first investigator who got baptized when I came into this area. Edward and his family are going through A LOT of struggles right now which is stressing us out. Satan's really working hard on not only this family, but on our area. You'd think that we would have more work but anyone who's neither Angelica nor a Bailon (Edward and his family) drops like flies off the face of the earth. It's rather disturbing. 

       I messed up the funeral potatoes but I made tater tot casserole and that turned out DELICIOUS! Right now I'm backing off of making recipes and am going with croissant sandwiches. Oh and bytheway, Elder Adona detected mushrooms growing out of the zone leader's bathroom. That was pretty funny. I'm having a lot of fun with the zone leaders.

Love,

Elder Boothe

P.S. So the zone leaders that we live with cover mostly the same area that we do, except they're Spanish speaking missionaries. Anyway we passed off this one referral to them and they told us that the person told them that "a man and his son came to my door and talked to me about the Book of Mormon". Everyone always gets on Elder Adona's case because he looks way younger (and many times we act younger than we look too except I look like I'm older) than he actually is. Most of the time people think he's about 12-15 years old but nobody before has ever mistaken him to be "my son". Man we were cracking up so hard when we heard that. Another funny thing about that is that he's older than me. He's 21 and I'm 20.