CROCODILE BANDEE

I still haven't heard anything about my Visa.  Once It arrives then I'll be leaving that same day most likely. Which means I will have the privilege of calling home twice in 1 day, once for the trip down and another when I arrive there.  My next transfer is  Wednesday I believe since that's the day that Elder Swarts goes home.  I'm not sure if I'm going to be in the same area or not, so I'll let you know once they tell me. 

Just wondering if anyone in my MTC district is getting my blog.  I'd love to hear from everyone.  You can write on my blog or anyone can email me at justin.bandy@myldsmail.net.   I will write you back too!  If you want to pray for anything, pray for me and my companions to find more people to teach.  We're supposed to be teaching 20 lessons a week, and we have not taught more than 10 in a week since I have been here.

So on to the weekly news.  We had an exchange this week between my companionship and another one, and during the exchange one of the other Elders, Elder Tenney, crashed his bike and went to the hospital.  We were there for about 6-7 hours.  So I wasn't able to go to sleep until almost 2 in the morning.   Since I go to sleep at 10:30 every night, I was really tired.  So because of the accident my companions and I have to cover both areas now, which means we cover all of the city of Tallahassee.  It's super difficult because they only have 3 main
roads here so it takes FOREVER to get anywhere.  We celebrated fathers day yesterday at the church, which was nice since we got to do a song for them. The best part though was afterwards they brought a potluck for us, so we got to have the best meal I have received since I arrived here. 

We taught Jose and Maria this week and it was a good lesson.  Their kids godfather (Con padre) moved in with them and he’s really interested in the message which is great.  He’s even read a few pages from the Book of Mormon which is better than most of our investigators that we’ve been working with for the past few weeks. We’ve been working on getting them to understand “el Plan de Salvacion” since while our church is founded in the restoration, it is to live the plan of salvation that we were born into this life.  We met a family from Puerto Rico about 2-3 weeks ago and we haven’t been able to get in to teach them yet, but they took 2 books from us and we’ve been going back once a week to check up on them.  Their son, Alberto, has already read the whole book including the introduction and testimonies.  He even asked us to show him how to study the scriptures since he says that’s one of the ideas and concepts he kept reading in the scriptures. So we’re hoping when the family comes home this weekend that we’ll be able to go in and teach them.  If their son is ready for the gospel then he could be the means of having his family join as well.That’s pretty much all tht happened this week for us.  Our one investigator Walter who we set a BCD with hasn’t come to church the past 2 weeks, so he’s not getting baptized until he lets us talk to him.  Very disappointing.I need to work harder so that I’ll feel like I’m doing
more.  I want to work on contacting and especially on keeping eye-contact con los investigators y otros persons.

P.S. Please write and I will try and write back!!!!!!!

P.S.S. Emails are just as good as letters!!!!!!!

Jesus is always watching over us. 

Look at who is looking over my shoulder.

I have 2 companions Elder Swarts from Las Vegas, Nevada.  He goes home at the end of this transfer and enjoys playing his guitar and is a VERY outspoken missionary.  He has no problem talking to anyone that we see who looks to be even remotely Hispanic.  He is also very knowledgeable of the scriptures and he's been giving me questions to study every day or two since we don't have any really steady investigators for me to study for.  My other companion is Elder Correa.  He's from Mexico, the city of which I cannot pronounce nor will I attempt to spell.  He has 11 brothers and sisters.  He's only been a member for about 3 years and has read El Libro de Mormon sobre 4-5 vezes.  His mom and 3 of his sisters are members and the rest of his family are Catholic.  Elder Correa is a really funny guy,  he didn't speak any English before his mission and he can speak it really well now, and if English is supposed to be the hardest language to learn, than what do I have to worry about learning Spanish.

This week was pretty good.  We got fed 3-4 times which is great.  Living on $34 is really tough. Fast food gift cards would be nice :)  We had one day where we gave 4 lessons which is really rare, so it made that day just fly by.  The work is going good.  We met some interesting people this week, only 1 is investigating but it's nice to get out a little.  We met a lovely woman from Mexico who has 2 children that live with her.  She says that she really wants our help with that because her kids are not spiritual at all. She told us that if they would be better at doing the things of God, they would be better people, which we were only too quick to agree with.  We also were re-allowed to go and visit a former investigator named Minon (sounds the same as Filet-mignon).  She is a very animated Cuban woman.  She loves to talk to us and apparently stopped seeing because she didn't have time (the general reason that most stop or don't want to see us).  But she let us in and we had a wonderful lesson on 3 Nephi 11.  We'll be seeing her either tomorrow or Wednesday depending on what works for her.  We had dinner with our branch president, President Rodriguez, who is a great help to us, he always is giving out referrals at least once a week. Between him and our Ward Mission leader we get a lot of support.  We had dinner with Br. and Sis. Havlicak (have-li-check).  They are also always open to us helping to find easy and non-invasive ways to invite people to church or giving us referrals to people they meet while doing work.  Their 2 daughters also give us referrals every now and then.

Our counterparts in Quincy brought their "golden" family to church this week, it was great.  The family is so open to the gospel and they are getting baptized in the next week or 2.  Their investigator even brought a friend of his from his previous church last week.  Not even a member yet and already a missionary.  It is a real bolster to our spirits to see our other Elders having success in their areas.  I also was able to meet Br. Coronel's mother-in-law, who is from Bogota.  She told me its a beautiful 40-70 degrees year round, with hardly any heat to speak of,  a lot nicer weather wise than here in Florida.  (YES!!!)   Since I'm in the capital I also don't have to worry about any of the vigilante groups in the country either.  So I'm pretty excited to get there,  I'm just hoping that my Spanish will be better so that when I get there they only make fun of my accent and not the fact that I still can't speak the language.  We also had an exchange with our Zone leaders this week. That was fun.  Elder Musgrave and Elder Perdy are both pretty cool elders.  Neither of them speaks Spanish so they couldn't really help us out in that regard, but it was nice to have their experience with us.   Our Sunday service was pretty good, I understood about half of it which is great, since I haven't really understood much at all. I'm also getting somewhat better at talking to people in our lessons. I still need to learn when I can try to say something with the three of us. Usually when one of them is finishing saying something, the investigator or my other companion has something to say, so I don't get to talk as much as I would like. But it'll be better in the next few weeks.

Love you all,

P.S. Memaw don't try to use Spanish, I can't understand anything that you put in there.

This should say, "If this isn't your castle, then you aren't my PRINCESS"