Translation, Hu-Hot, and Catholics

This past sunday in the branch, elder rocha and I were assigned to translate for the family of the past branch president.They gave us little helicopter pilot headphone things and we handed out the headsets to the people in the congregation, it was the real deal. To make matters worse, this was testimony meeting so I was staring down the barrel of long personal stories with accents from like 6 different countries. I was not feeling confident. This was the second time i have ever translated so i was stressing a little bit, but elder Rocha went first and told me that if i didn't know what they were saying i could just make stuff up. As the first person got up to bear their testimony i heard elder rocha say things like "the gospel is the cheat codes to life" and "we all should be feeding the missionaries a lot more" or "people say my beard makes me look like an old testament prophet" and i felt a lot better about the situation. There was a little boy from the ward sitting there listening to us and he just said "you guys aren't good at this".  We topped off the meeting by translating the closing hymn in to english and we saw that the people with the headsets on were laughing pretty good. 

Also this week, I had the opportunity to go on exchanges With Elder McConnell. He's a really interesting cat and we decided we were going to treat ourselves for lunch so we went to hu hot. While we prayed over our food he said "please let someone prepared find us here in Hu-Hot" which i thought was kind of funny, but later on while we were standing in line waiting for our food to be cooked this teenage kid turned to us and asked us if we were on lunch or something (theres a grocery store here called Hy-Vee and the employees wear white shirts and black tags). We explained to him that we weren't grocery store workers, and what our purpose was as missionaries and he was really interested. Probably my favorite moment in the conversation was when the kid turned to Elder McConnell and asked if he liked anime. Elder McConnell loves anime. They really connected, and there's not a doubt in my mind that God placed that kid in our path. Prayer is pretty cool.

Later in the exchange, we went to teach some of our investigators, Luisa and Maribel. It was an awesome lesson and they told us that they were talking to each other about deaths in their families, and they were really sad. After the conversation, luisa flipped open her Libro de Mormon right to a chapter all about the plan of salvation. It was a miracle. They told us they knew the Book of Mormon was true, and we invited them to a date to be baptized. To our surprise, they explained to us that they were catholic and that is was going to stay that way. We tried our hardest  but they wouldn't budge. it really got me down, it happens a lot with hispanic people around here. these people had just rejected eternal joy and that really hurt me. Later in the week, elder rocha and i went to got teach a referral we had recieved from the english elders. She told us she was catholic right at the beginning, and i was really discouraged. But we taught her the restoration which she accepted, and invited her to be baptized. She said yes, and that really made me realize that people can change. It gave me hope to keep teaching these people and to believe that we are helping. 

The longer I serve in my mission the more I come to appreciate the help that God gives us. I always think of this one Marshallese guy who we taught in Ottumwa named Paulson who got married, gave up chewing tobacco, stopped using Beetlenut and got baptized. I saw God change Paulson and im excited to see that more in myself and in the people we teach. I know he can change all of us for the better if we let him.

I love you all a lot and hope you had a happy new year!

--Elder Thomas

Pictures: 

Me holding another nameless hamster

Iowa State Capitol

Elder McConnel Leading the Ninos