Pampa week 8

Pilot Pahulu and Moffitt

So a bunch of people in Pampa fly planes. So this last week we went to the airfield out here and just went to a couple hangars real quick to take a look around. No wings on this bad boy, but hey!

We got to sit in a really cool helicopter too. Man, those things are super expensive. And as we were sitting there looking at all the controls, Elder Pahulu and I were telling each other if we had to pilot that things we would probably die.

Tell Evie congratulations! Baptism is such an awesome decision. It's all we work for as missionaries. haha

I'll tell you a little bit about a big trip we made yesterday to Shamrock again. This time, our assistant ward mission leader was going down, so we went with him and avoided spending lots miles and gas on the trip. He is a super awesome guy. Since Shamrock is about an hour away, all of the people in the town were on an "unassigned home teaching list." But he took it upon himself to be everyone's home teacher in the town. So we left a little before 3 and didn't get home until after 9 at night. That's dedication from a ward member right there. He even baked a bunch of bread and cake to bring to the families out there too. He's a great guy. There is so much potential out in that town too. We found out that every single family living out there is a part member family. Oh boy, it's a gold mine. The only problem being that it would be quite difficult to teach anyone considering the distance. We'll see what happens. It would be great if we could start teaching some people out there. The other problem would of course be to get them to come to church because they have to drive so far. 

Here is a picture of some random seed store our in Shamrock that has "Brand LDS" written on it if you can see up in the background.

And here's a members super cool car collection

This Sunday morning we had a very interesting ward council meeting. The bishop asked if there we suggestions on how we could start including the Spanish speaking people more and what we could do to help get them out to church and more involved. Then one of the racist members of the ward said how it wasn't a language barrier thing. It was just "the brown thing" as he called it. He went on to talk about how all the Hispanic people are just less dedicated and don't have it in their blood to stay actively involved in the church after getting baptized and it's just part of the culture. Wow. Not to mention, Sister Rocha (who is Mexican) and Elder Pahulu (Not hispanic, but dark skinned) are just sitting there having to listen to this old, ignorant white guy rant on. I actually tried to butt in and talk over him once but he wouldn't let me. So we just sat there. Eventually when he ended everyone was like holy cow, no wonder the Hispanics don't want to come to the ward buddy. But, moral of the story is: don't be an ignorant white guy. It just got me so mad!

Man, another tough week though. We were not able to sit down and teach Diego and Janie at all this week. Neither of them were at church. Diego has been twice already, but since Janie has not we assume that we will be postponing BOTH of their baptisms to a later time. We only saw Isabella and Elena once. They are just so busy nowadays. Isabella was so so so so close. And she had just received all these blessing from going to church and living the commandments (like getting a new job, getting her kids back, and just generally being so much happier). And now that she's so busy with her 2 jobs she can't see us hardly ever. Pray hard for Isabella this week.

We had to drop America as of a couple weeks ago. That's why you haven't been hearing about her lately. Good news for church this week though. There were 5 Hispanic families (that was an answer to some prayers after that old white guy threw down in ward council) at church on Sunday, including Samael's family. Ana and Yoana haven't been able to make it the last 2 weeks, but they have been here every Sunday before then. I was able to teach the Spanish Sunday School class this week. It was pretty fun. I don't like just being a boring teacher and reading from the book. So we had some fun in a really good discussion, drawing pictures on the board and reading an awesome story.

It seems like this whole week has been one big struggle, but every day at the end there always seems to be something that makes the whole day worth it. Then Sunday with all the Spanish speakers at church and the trip to Shamrock was like the cherry on top of the week. We think maybe the Lord is trying to teach us a lesson with that: Endure to the End! Remember that if you're having a hard day this week. I love you mom! I love you dad! I love you Meagan! I love you Courtney!