Boca Chica 10 - Time is Flying

The Santo Domingo temple which - in my opinion - is the most beautiful temple in the world tied with Gilbert. It looks so much better in real life, too.

 

I don't know how it's P-day again. It seems like the P-days are kind of just coming now. I don't really anticipate it all that much anymore. Before I know it, it's already Sunday night and I just think to myself where the week went.

 

But this week was AWESOME. First off, we had the temple day on Tuesday. The temple here in the Dominican Republic is beautiful. Palm trees, tropical flowers, and the weather right now is really nice. But more than just the view and outside of the temple, the visit to the temple was exactly what I needed. It was so peaceful and it was a great experience to be in the House of the Lord with all of the other missionaries in our mission. I loved it and it really motivated me this week and just helped me to stay energized and animated, because the mission is NOT EASY. I never really understood what a mission was until I got here. I mean, I always wanted to be a missionary but I never knew how much it required. What you do, the work you're accomplishing, and how ready you have to be for the challenges and hard things that will come. There are ups and downs every week. But I'm loving my time here right now.

 

As the transfer, or these six weeks, are coming to an end, my companion Elder Tate and I are working really hard and trying to help our investigators overcome their challenges and be able to recieve the blessings of baptism and this church. But we have been focusing on one investigator in particular lately.

Elder Aplanalp and I looking about as thug as missionaries can get hahaha.

 

We have a woman named Maria that we are teaching.. She's been coming to church constantly for 7 weeks in a row now. She was a contact that Elder Tate and I had at the start of our time together. The amount she's grown and progressed in our time together is crazy. She quit alcohol, we got her discs of the Book of Mormon so she can read, and just recently we helped them set a date for her marriage with her husband. Her husband isn't really interested in listening to the message, but we had an awesome lesson with both of them about 5 days ago. He said that he would support her in her decision to become a member of the Church and so they have a date to get married for the 31st of this month and hopefully soon after she can get baptized. We're really excited for her and everything she's doing.

 

I'm seeing miracles in the lives of people that we know here every single week. As my companion and I have been working and praying and fasting for everyone we're teaching, the progression they've made is dumbfounding. God's helping us out big time and I'm having a lot of experiences out here.

 

On a side note too, we went to the beach this morning for our exercise and it was LEGIT so I'm gonna' hopefully have time to send some pics of that too.

Pic from the many beaches we have down her in Boca Chica. Every P-day we either run or take a bus out to a beach for morning study. We´re one of the only areas with a beach in our area. Our president is legit enough to allow it too as long as it´s early and the beach is empty.

 

Hope everything is going good and that everyone is loving life.

Love,

Elder Graff