Allergies So Bad We Went to the Hospital

How are your families progressing?

Eh, they´re coming along, but slowly.

How is your companionship working out?

We´re good. He is really good at helping me out on the language and staying patient. We have different personalities which are very apparent, but we get along just fine. 

How are your shoes holding up? 

My favorites are the Dunhams we got close to our house. They´re holding up the best. The nice ones we got aren´t super durable, so I´ve just been using them for church and meetings. And the docs are fine, not the best but I rotate the two frequently. No problems yet. 

Hey Family!

     Everything here is just dandy! Yes I can get some socks here, I just like the ones from home more haha. This week was crazy! The weather here is so dang strange. All week it was really hot, then Saturday and Sunday it was FREEZING and today it´s pouring rain and cold. I don´t understand the weather.

     I spent almost all day in the hospital on Friday (don´t worry mom I´m alive) cuz my allergies made me almost stop breathing. My nose was stuffed shut and my throat closed off almost, so we went to the hospital and the guy gave me some magic medicine.    We called Ronise, one of the ladies in the ward, and asked her what I could take cuz I was having trouble breathing and she´s a nurse. So instead of telling us what to do she just came and picked me up and took us to the hospital. We were waiting there and she told them I was her son and wrote her address down haha so it was all free. We have been teaching her and her family a lot lately because she´s been inactive since she was baptized as a little girl and her husband and daughter aren´t members. She adores us though, so it was nice having her there to help me. I´m gonna make some cookies tonight and take em over there for a family home evening.

     We had only 1 investigator in church yesterday cuz of the freezing cold weather, but we were able to find several new families during this week.  Families are our only focus now. We are really trying to target priesthood power, because our ward here is really weak in that area. There was a baptism in the ward this week for a little boy and they had his birthday (Ben 10) party in the church afterwards. It´s amazing how many people come out for the baptism of a little boy when there is food and a trampoline party involved! haha We baptized that family last week and had about 20 members there, which I thought was really good. Then they have a baptism of a little boy in the ward and there were about 100 ward members there. Maybe next time we´ll announce our baptism as a party? 

     A lady in the ward gave me a guitar to borrow. Elder Costa is teaching me how to play, so my goal is to sing and play a hymn with him at their baptism on the 8th. I´m still in the learning stage but it´s really not super hard. And I´m not embarrassed to sing there cuz no one will understand cuz I´ll be singing the English part. We have had a lot of success lately finding new people to teach. Every lunch that we have with members we re-teach them the restoration lesson. Then afterwards we ask them if they have any friends or neighbors that would like to hear this same message of the restored gospel. They have been passing along a lot more references than before so we will definitely continue doing this. 

     I am now in the phase where I´m losing weight. Don´t ask me how haha I think it´s cuz I quit pop and now my body has decided that I really want to be healthier. I just called into the secretaries and they said they were able to get my package out of the post office. President will be doing interviews this week so he´ll bring it to me then. I also called into the church office building a few weeks ago to order a hard-back triple and a few church DVD´s, so president will bring that stuff to me as well. All of our cell phones have a number we can call for ordering stuff like that and garments. I asked the lady if she knew English and she did, so then I talked to her about Utah and the weather there and stuff for like 15 minutes. So I´m definitely excited for that book of Mormon triple, cuz all I´ve been using is a paper-back copy and it´s getting destroyed. Thanks for sending the package last week! I´ll get it at transfer! I hate the deodorant here haha. It´s this weird spray deodorant that doesn´t work super well. 

I hope everyone is doing well and had a great summer!

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Shepherd