January 24

Dear family,

     I finally got your package last week during interviews with Presidente Callan, now my part of the fridge is filled with candy ha ha. I was suprised when I kept pulling more and more of my favorite candy out of the box. Thank you very much. Next time it would be wise to send the package 2 and a half months ahead of time, or 3 months if you don´t want to send it express. Don´t send M&M´s they all melted together and it was very messy. I can´t believe you spent $55.95 on all that! I really liked the photo album, but when I saw the Walmart brand I was sore afflicted. I also got a package from Grandma and Grandpa Singson, which was totally destroyed. They put it in a plastic bag so it would all stay together. The everything cardboard of paper was ruined, so all the pictures that they sent were destroyed and it made it difficult to read their letter. Besides that it all made it here.

     The interviews were a little different than I expected. He basically only asked me how I was doing and how my Family,  Area, Companion, and Testimony are (or the FACT questions). Those are the same questions that we always answer with our weekly email to him. I was the first one we interviewed out of my zone. It only took about 7 min and then I was done. Then we talked to Hermana Callan about staying healthy and drinkin water. After that they gave me my packages and we left. I love Presidente y Hermana Callan, they are so awesome. The mission has increasingly been getting better since he got here and from the stories I hear from everyone I can really tell.

     I don´t know what to say about my area. It´s not going so well. Right now we are working really hard with the ward to get it up and running again so we aren´t really teaching lots of investigators. When I first got here the ward died. We have worked really hard to revive it. 20 active members is not going to give us the help we need to keep our new converts active. Thanks to our work we have gotten the ward on the right track. Now we are starting to see an average of 50 members in church every week. We have been getting the bishop really excited about ward missionary work. He has already started getting the members animated about visiting each other. We just barely got a new ward mission leader, Hno Irala, and we have already made many plans with him. The bishop is working hard so I know he´ll get things going again. Solely from the people I know we could have 90 people in church.

     Sunday is always the same. Come to church, go eat lunch, and look for the people who didn´t come and teach the investigators that are in the same area. Monday always varies, sometimes we don´t even have time to go shopping. Wednesday we have ward night and our english class. Thursday we always are trying to get investigators go to sport night. Then tuesday, friday, and saturday we try to teach lessons to investigators, but they are never there. The only time anybody is home is at night and that makes it hard to teach a lot of investigators. Even then we usually don´t teach the people who said were going to be there, so we go to our back up plan less actives. Thats basically it, but we do have 3 progressing families right now, but progressing very slowly. The hardest part is getting them to come to church.

I´m out of time. Got to write Pres. Callan
LOVE YOU!
Elder Zachary James Singson

Jan 17

Just another email from your favorite Elder! Last week I got a package from Sis. Anton and a letter from the Henriksons. Tell them thanks. I still haven´t gotten yours yet, but maybe President Callan will bring it over for interviews. I don´t know what I´m going to do about the pictures. I guess I´ll just send you guys the SD card when I send you my Journal. I´ll figure out something... I don´t know. I can´t load the pictures onto the blog like I thought I could. Oh well.

 

     I´m still waiting for the office to send us air conditioning. We are the only Elders in the mission (maybe) without one. We did get a new fan so now we have two, but it would still be nice to have cold air. It´s great when the mission sends out new stuff. Then we give our old stuff to the ward and they love us even more. It´s crazy that Janessa is already married. I guess Marisa will have to do the same now. Everybody is doing it, there is a girl in my ward who is 13 (looks like an 18 year old) and she is married already. Her husband is 21. Crazy huh? yeah don´t do that.

 

     There were 50 people in the chapel today. And now both of the Divorced Ex Bishops are active again. Yay! That will really strengthen the ward. Now we are waiting for Fam. Alvarez to come back to church. We´ve been bugging and bugging them, but they still won´t come. We´ll get them though and we´ll get their son married while we are at it. It is getting harder to teach people. They don´t want to do anything anymore. We are going all over the place and searching for more people, but they just won´t exersice faith. They won´t take the first step to trust in God and pray. In truth everything is pretty eventless. We walk, teach, they tell us a bunch of excuses, rinse, and repeat. I am now trying my best to play the piano for the ward on sunday, but I can only do the top hand and there is zero time to practice.

 

I´m done for today. Love you all!

Elder Zachary James Singson

Jan 10

Turns out that this ward has gone through hard times, and this mission. There used to be 4 missionaries here instead of two. But bad things happen and people sometimes aren´t strong enough to desire to continue. We are trying really hard to work with the ward and bringing people back, but you are right mom. I´ve gotten a little laid back, and I´ve corrupted my companion too. I totally am trying to help people when I´m in the lesson and teaching them, but when I am outside of the lesson I stop thinking about them and their progression. Most people don´t want to do their part in searching though. We tell them to pray and then they don´t. I´m not sure some of them are even listening. They just say ´´si ´ whenever you ask them anything. It´s like all the information goes in one ear and out the other.

     People aren´t open enough either. Anybody will let you into their house, but it is really hard to teach them. They want to talk to you, because they are friendly, but they don´t really care about your message. They will listen to you, but if they aren´t interested they won´t tell you. Sometimes they just want to practice their English with you. Sometimes they want to talk to you because you are ´American´. And even if they really are interested they either 1. Won´t do anything with the information you give them 2. Won´t tell you their doubts so they wont progress or 3. make it impossible for you to teach them a second time because they are never home! Either way there isn´t any progression. We have three investigators that we might be able to help, but we need to work harder on keeping in touch with them and following up on their commitments.

     I don´t know what else to say, I´m going to try to put the pictures on the blog now.

Love you,

Elder Zacarías Santiago Singson

Jan 03

Its raining a lot, but it´s better than being hot. 

New Years! A blank sheet, start anew. A time to make goals and look toward the future. A time of extreme amounts of fireworks blowing up all night and people drinking so much that they have hangovers for the next two days and don´t leave their house. Seriously the streets were empty. A perfect time for Investigators to make and keep their commitments, Right? If thats what they wanted to do then yes. We spent all week visiting people and commiting them to come to church on Sunday. The first Fast and Testimony of the year. Only one person we invited actually came and there were only 20 others in the sacrament meeting. I am sick of their excuses.

People don´t even give good excuses. I was asleep was the most common one, but you get up to go to work at 5 in the morning every other day! Don´t feed me crap. Tell me straight do you want us to teach you our message and get baptised or not. Some people use the excuse  I was at my family´s house. Ok I can accept that, but starting next week the excuse ain´t gonna  fly. I´m sick of wasting my time, actually the Lord´s time, on people that don´t really care. And I really don´t want to baptise people that are just going to go inactive either.

We are really trying to work on strengthening the ward. Mostly because our ward is becoming inactive, but also I am selfish and I don´t want to have to look for people to teach if the members can just give us good references. The ward has been through tough times, they lost two bishops in the span of 4 years due to divorce, and only one of them is still active... but just by barely. The ward doesn´t see that it´s a test of faith and obviously Satan is winning because nobody is standing up to him and saying ´I am a strong and faithful follower of Jesus Christ´. We´ll see how things go in the future.

I may seem all angry and bothered in my emails, but really i´m not. I´m just sad that these people could be strong, they just aren´t trying. They all beleive and they all want to do whats right, but something is preventing them. We just need to find out what it is... and Destroy it!!!

Love ya´ll,

Elder Zachary James Singson

Mission Photos



That dot... it looks too big to be just a dot!



There is my companion, taking numbers.





Holy Crap! That is one Giant fly!





This is what the middle of nowhere looks like. It´s a pretty big area. At least it´s not the Jungle middle of Nowhere.



It´s just as big as my thumb!