Week 25 - A Bad Haircut

  This was kind of a quiet week, as far as news from Elder Schaff goes. He and Elder Lopez continue to teach and are working hard. One of his main concerns this week was a bad haircut, which brought up memories of many years ago. When Hayden was just a toddler, we cut his hair short, a true buzz cut. His dad and I did not like the look on him and after that we made sure to keep his hair longer. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication and Elder Schaff got another bad haircut this past week, but thankfully, hair grows. All will be well, it will just take some time. Another downer was that computer viruses have not been cleared up and he still cannot upload photos, it has been 6 weeks since he has sent photos home and that is very aggravating! I also mailed him a 6 page letter on Saturday, January 21st and it has never arrived, although a package that I mailed to him flew through in just 3 days. So, lots of small frustrations lately, but such is life.

  Here is his weekly email-

  "Hello world! Elder Schaff here, giving the details of the week. So we had trainer exchanges because we were housing Elder Kauai and Elder Flores, who began training Thursday. On Wednesday we found a family and on Thursday we had exchanges with Echo 1, and actually taught the family about the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ here on the earth. It was a fantastic lesson, all of the kids participated (It's a family of 6! 4 kids!) and the head of the household, Antonio, prayed. Hoping they will stay interested and receive the blessings of the gospel, because they had a lot of questions that the gospel will answer for them! 

  (A) isn't sure about coming to church with her work schedule, so we're going to have to put on our problem solving caps for that one because that is going to be a big hindrance to baptism. One does not simply get baptized and not go to church.....it's an important blessing to apply in life as a requirement! Sabbath day observance gives us the strength that we need to go another week in this crazy world! She knows that too, but with work it's always hard. The Spanish people never stop working! <<Son Trabajadores!!!>>>  Also (G) still doesn't have that answer, and might have to move! Ay yi yi!

   So that's my summary. Matilde isn't doing particularly great either, but I'm not giving up on her! There's something we need to teach her better to make the purpose of the church clear to her, because right now she doesn't feel the need to act, but action is everything! We need to act to improve our lives, or even to enjoy it; nothing is literally the fruit of idleness.

   The devastation and disappointments of a mission are trying, but the successes are so much more sweeter, and filled with great spiritual joy. Right now we're focusing on helping that family, finding prepared people that are in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and building up the ward. Our ward struggles a bit because there are a lot of secret contentions among the members because someone offended someone else 12 years ago or whatever. So the missionaries of Echo and Hermano Saldivar, the faithful 1st counselor, are out and about seeking to build up the ward and gather the lost sheep. 

   As for the exchange with Elder Flores, it helped me improve my finding. He was willing to talk to literally anyone in our path. I tried to apply it the next day, and that's actually how we found the family, we were going to walk by them! I opened my mouth and saved the day! I didn't get to go with Elder Kauai, which was a bummer, because he was in the MTC with me and we both like to sing, so we were totally going to rock Echo with some spiritual serenades from the Spanish Hymn book; unfortunately Elder Flores's area was right next to ours, so he really didn't need to be housed near the mission office (which is the purpose of housing trainers, Echo is the closest area to the office, other than his area). As a result, he got permission to take Elder Kauai to his area after the first day of the 2-day exchange. So that was that.

   I'll be on the look out for some more teaching moments to share with all of you reading next week. I'll have you know that I got a bad haircut and it's now really short and probably going to be against missionary standards, so I hope it grows quick and isn't a distraction. If my haircut distracts any of our investigators from receiving the gospel I'm going to be devastated! That's the Echo 2 lowdown! (All of the Echo missionaries stayed, except we got a new sister missionary in Echo 3. She's about to go home, but Echo 3 had one of their best weeks this week!)

   Oh shoot! I forgot Echo 3 baptized (M) Hernandez this Saturday and it was an awesome experience! Unfortunately I'm out of time...whoops!

--Elder Schaff