Shaun's Update

Wow. This week creeped by, I think it was the bad feelings. Everything started out really well this week, I had more of a desire to learn and understand who really is my compañero. His name is Elder Calva, and it’s taken me along time to get to know him. It seems like every question I ask him I get a "well why do you want to know that" answer. But I was determined. He is twenty years old, has two older brothers and two younger sisters. He talks really slow and tries to be really spiritual. The truth is it’s a great thing to do, but for me when someone is talking softly, slowly and with big silences, I get bored. So were looking for a balance. His favorite music is metal Gothic, when asking if that was the style where they painted their nails black and used mascara... he responded, "I didn’t use mascara" haha. What an adventure. After a few days of contention, we decided something needed to be done. After two hours of talking... and when I say talking I mean heavy talking, we resolved things for a lil. Figured out that when someone does something to him, his first thought was revenge. I’m crazy grateful for a class I took in high school, Marriage and financial literacy. I’ve learned to communicate in definitely different situations. What a blessing. I’ve also learned the power of prayer in communicating and overcoming difficult situations. At times in our discussion when things got really hard for me, I was able to leave the room, kneel down and say a prayer, and ideas come up on what I could do better. A great resource and definitely useful.

So now everything is all good, kinda, and we're working to further the work in our area. Mainly contacting and disappointment, commitments and broken commitments, and invitations and rejection. Awe goodness it’s great to be a missionary. But even with all the rejection, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing. Watching someone offer their first humble prayer, and seeing the gospel and how it’s helped so many people.

I had a dream this week mom, that we were doing some sort of activity, and after when saying goodbye we hugged and yeah just wanted to tell you that, and that I love you.

Thanks for everything! Love you

Elder Rhodes