Week 13

Hola! I hope you are doing well and having a great week. Miss you all! I got to the Dominican Republic on Tuesday night. Man it is absolutely crazy here. It is nothing like the united states so I don’t know what to compare it to. There's no traffic laws and so traffic is just a free for all. There's also a ton of people on Motos that kinda just do whatever they want haha and they honk a ton there. Honk means hi, bye, I'm here, hurry up and probably a ton of other stuff too. It's awesome. Idk what to write so I'll follow the rubric my dad gave me.

My new companion is elder Gray and he's super awesome. He's from Utah and he grew up on a cattle ranch. We like a lot of the same things so that is awesome. My parents said to put my address but I can't cause they don't have any addresses so we're the yellow cement house on one of the main streets up a big hill. I sleep in a bed. The weather is pretty good. It'll just randomly start raining so that's fun. It's pretty hot but not nearly as bad as I thought. When you're in the shade or have a fan it's all good. I'm in a super pretty area kinda in the mountains. Church is really awesome, the jovens (youth) are awesome and they all love the missionaries, it's super sweet. They also love to take pictures haha. My Spanish is very meh. In the states I was getting to understand a lot of what people were saying. Here the Spanish is completely different and wayyyyy harder haha. They use a ton of slang and so I'm working on all of that. Also alot of the words mean different things. For example they say way! To say hi. In Mexico that's like calling someone an idiot.

Spiritual thought. I got this from the zone leaders and thought it was super good. 

"Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth’s rite of Passage? His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he is a MAN. He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own. The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could become a man! Finally, after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold. It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him. He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm. We, too, are never alone. Even when we don’t know it, God is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us. When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him." Author Unknown 

Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. 

 Moral of the story: Just because you can’t see God, doesn’t mean He is not there. ‘For we walk by faith, not by sight.’ 

 Hope you all have a fabulous week. Elder Jonah Greer