December 16, 2013 – Have yourself a Merry little Christmas!

Dear Mom, Dad, Lauren, and soon-to-be Brody Ian,

Christmas is almost here! This week we have a bunch of Christmas things to do! Tuesday, we’re helping a family build a little Nativity scene, Wednesday is our Branch Christmas Dinner, which I've been asked to play music for. Yay buddy! They honestly don't care that the music is in English. In fact, it's always the same song they want to hear! "Elder Froude, por que no tocas Hallelujah ahora mismo??"  Translation: “Elder Froude, why aren't you playing Hallelujah right now?”  Lol! That reminds me, the members here, despite being well aware that my name is pronounced Froude, call me Elder Fraud, which means fraudulent. It's really funny so I just go along with it.  It’s more like a term of endearment.  And soon enough, it's going to be my name!  XD  Anyways, Thursday is our Christmas Conference in La Romana which I'm also going to play for. I'm playing and singing Storm by Lifehouse…thanks for the chords, Mom! :D It sounds great; I think I'm going to do decently.  ^_^ And then Saturday is Alexandra's baptism! Good week ahead!

This week has been pretty good.  Alexandra's entrevista bautismal, baptismal interview, was this past Saturday. She's ready for Baptism!! We're all really excited for her! :D Also this week, we took two of the young men with us to a cita with a girl their age. It seemed like a great idea at first; people to be her friends when she came to church! Well, the lesson that was supposed to be 20 or 25 minutes long took close to 3 hours! The jovenes, youth, bless them they're fantastic, but let's just say that they aren't ready for missionary work yet. Not in a bad way, though. They just spent nearly the entire time talking about different things. It was really difficult to get things back on track. So, the lesson in this experience? Make sure that the youth we bring are coming with us to teach and not to chill. Don't get me wrong, I love those boys like little brothers, and we aren't angry with them in any way, shape, or form, but there's a time and place to have fun and a time and place to teach. It's ok though, they're both young, 15 and 14. They have plenty of time to learn and grow.  ^_^

So yesterday, I spoke in church for the first time! It was actually pretty last minute O: One of the people assigned to talk called us the night before at about 7:30 telling us that she couldn't speak and asked if one of us could speak for her. Elder Rocha happily volunteered me to speak! I spoke on Service.  I also used the parable about Jesus Christ saying, "If you have done it unto at least one of my brethren, ye have done it unto me." in Matthew 25.  Surprisingly, I spoke for ten minutes despite having so little time to prepare. And my Spanish was unusually good, I noticed.  O: Thank you Holy Spirit for helping me to talk well!  I still have LOTS to learn in Spanish. I can communicate decently now but there are still grammar quirks I'm still trying to get down. For example, the English word Was. In Spanish, there's four different kinds of Was for four different situations. My brain is still trying to process it.  X)

The progress with the mellas (mellas are fraternal twins, gemelas are identical twins) and their mother is going very well! But to our luck, ANOTHER family joined in our last  lesson and they want to continue the lessons! This time it’s two boys and their mother.  The Lord is really blessing us :)

Now for the phrase of the week because I realized that I missed the past few weeks for it.  X) This week's phrase is "Pero Muchaho(a)!" Literally, it means But Boy/Girl!  But it's used in the same context as "Duuuuude!" For example, if someone stepped on your new shoes, you wouldn't approve of that, so you would say "Duuude! My Shoes!" In Spanish, it's "Pero Muchacho! Mis Zapatos!"

That's about all for today. This week I'm going to take LOTS of pictures from the parties and activities. ^_^

The next time I write, Elder Froude 1 will be Ian or Brody or Broseph or Brometheus or Brotato Chip or Bronut or Brobo Cop and other sorts and forms of Bro :) Give Elder Froude 1 a huge bear hug for me! :) Love you all so much too!  I miss you all! Until next week!  :)

-Elder Froude 2

December 9, 2013 – Marvelous work and a glory!

Dear Mom, Dad, Lauren, and Elder Froude 1, soon to be Brody,

I want to start this email by saying how crazy it is that my brody is finally coming home! The tables have turned, and now he's going to be the one emailing me from home. He can finally see all the bumps and scratches I put on his car while I had it.  ;) Just kidding bro! Your car is in great shape and has been really good to me.  ^_^ You're going to have lots of movies to watch, music to listen to, and video games to play. Take it one step at a time, ok? I don't want your brain to explode!  ;D

Entonces, anyways, my week has been pretty good! A lot of it was spent preparing Alexandra for her baptismal interview this Friday. She's so excited for her baptism on the 21st! Also, to our happiness, we found a lovely family that is taking lessons now! The family consists of a mother, father, and two gemelas adorables, adorable twin girls of 9 years of age. They're seriously the sweetest girls; they might give me diabetes! Lol! Anyway, they're all interested and our next lesson with them we're going to finish the Plan of Salvation. The girls actually went to church a few times with a member before so they already like church. The mother actually came to church this past Sunday and she said she liked it too! Seeing our investigators making progress and sincerely interested in the gospel brings me a kind of joy that I’ve never felt before. It's a very special feeling that I can't really describe. I'll be sure to get pictures of them next week for you guys!

In other news, the 18th of this month is the Branch Christmas dinner. The members asked me to play music for them for the activity. Should be fun! I don't know what I'm going to play yet though; I don't know any Spanish songs. But the members said that they didn't mind if it was in English, they just want me to play something. Lol! I was also asked to play something for the Zone Christmas Conference as well. Ooooh buddy! I gotta pick some songs and practice them!

That's about all the important stuff this week. Alexandra's baptism is so close and I can feel that the new family will accept baptism too. Perhaps we'll invite them this week. Depends on what the Spirit tells us. :) And I'll also have more pictures… I keep forgetting to charge the camera! X)  And one last thing Brody, have a safe flight back home! :D

I love you and miss you all!

-Elder Froude

December 3, 2013 – Sick on Thanksgiving week :(

Dear Mom, Dad, Lauren, and Elder Froude 2,

First, I'm so sorry I didn't get to email you yesterday. A member wanted us to visit with a less active that happened to be during the email time, and then after that a member wanted to feed us. It went well though, so it was still good. Luckily, we have a bit of time today in between citas to send a quick letter.

I read all your email and saw all your pictures. Wow! Hearst Castle looks beautiful! I'm gonna have to pay that place a visit when I come back! And Laney looks like she had a lot of fun in that parade ^_^ And Dad, I know this is gonna be a bittersweet for you, but you should know that you have been a wonderful Bishop, and the Lord is grateful for your faithful service to Him.

The last week has been pretty tough for the most part. Elder Rocha and I have been sick the whole week. During the week one or the both of us would have to go back to the house during the day because we felt too sick to work. I had a fever and Elder Rocha had a bad cold. It was actually really weird; for 3 days my body wasn't retaining water. I wasn't sweating and I was thirsty all the time. I know it's ok to rest when we're sick, but it feels weird not going out and teaching. Of course, I would study or something when we had to go back home, but there was quite a bit that we could have done but couldn't because we were sick. I don't know, it's just a weird feeling.  :P Don't worry, Mom and Dad, I’m fine now, I just drank water constantly until I started sweating again. Elder Rocha and I are 100% again and are out and about.

Now despite the negative things, there were really good stuff that alsohappened last week! We invited Alexandra to baptism, and she said yes!  We set her baptism for the 14th of December! Yay! Elder Rocha and I are really happy about our first baptism as a companionship. We invited Sanmi to baptism too, but she's praying on it. We're checking with her tomorrow to help her with her questions and see how her prayers are going. Hopefully, she says yes too! Oh, and sorry there's no pictures today, Mom :( The computers here are super old and are slow with downloading pictures.

So, I didn't get to celebrate Thanksgiving here, but we have something really big planned out for Christmas! It's a multiple Zone Activity at the mission office in Santo Domingo. It sounds like a lot of fun! It's on the 17th; I’m looking forward to it!

Well, I have to go now; we have another cita to go to in a few minutes. I'll write you again next Monday! Love you all! :)

-Elder Froude

November 25, 2013 – Drink lots of water or end up getting dehydrated!

Dear Mom, Dad, Lauren, and Elder Froude 1,

This week was not as quite as eventful as last week, but I did learn a lot from it. However, I must first say how proud I am of my big brother Elder Froude 1 for being so quick to action in the Philippines with relief efforts for those affected by the typhoon. He has always been an amazing example to me and he is the kind of missionary I strive to be. Of course, with time and a lot of practice, perhaps I can achieve that, and boy do I hope I can!

Entonces, well then, now for my week. Elder Rocha and I had intended to invite two of our progressing investigators, Sanmi and Alexandra, to baptism for the 7th of December. We weren’t able to meet with Sanmi at all this week, tristes (sad) :( but we were able to get her to do the next best thing, attend church! We´ve been inviting her for weeks and she finally came!

Sanmi finally attended church last Sunday! Alexandra came too but she left before I could take her picture.

Now Alexandra, we were able to meet with her last week and had a lesson planned for her, but we weren´t able to teach her anything. For some reason, the Spirit just wasn´t there. Usually it wasn´t hard to keep Alexandra´s attention. However, this time around it was very easy for her to get distracted and we weren´t able to teach much at all. :( I guess she needs a bit more time before she´s ready to be invited. As missionaries, we work on the Lord´s time table, not ours. Will we fully understand how that works? No way. Will we follow it nonetheless? Absolutely! I´m glad I learned this so soon into my mission. I know a few people that don´t like it when they don´t understand why things happen. This situation, among many others, is where the Lord tests how strong your faith in Him is. Through Faith in Him we can overcome any adversity, and when we overcome adversity, we get blessed. It's that simple. Easier said than done, of course, but it´s always comforting that the Lord will lift us up when it seems like we cannot lift ourselves up.

Oh, I suppose I need to tell you that I got really sick yesterday into this morning from bad dehydration. :P We were fasting for people to come to church, but it happened that that particular day was really hot and we walked around a lot. I´m completely fine now though!

Oh yes, that reminds me! Literally the next day after p-day last week I got your first package!! It´s made me so happy! ^_^ It was during Entrevistas, interviews, with the president with the zone.  So the AP´s brought all our packages and letters to the church for us to get. Thank you so much for all the food and candy! It made me feel at home! :) I haven´t eaten all of it yet, I´m saving them all carefully until I get the next one!

And another piece of good news, there was an American family from Texas that came to church this Sunday and they were nice enough to take us to their vacation house in CAP CANA for lunch, it was gorgeous! And Dad, you´re gonna love this, I saw the most beautiful golf course there and thought ´´Gosh, Dad would love to play golf here!`` I have pictures!

The Stewart Family from Texas

Amazing golf course in Cap Cana resort

Yummy Sunday lunch with the Stewarts!

 My companion and I are going to a Noche de Hogar (It’s Family Home Evening but with more people from the ward or branch) in a member´s house tonight. I´m playing a song tonight. It´s the A Team by Ed Sheeran. A member gave me the lyrics and chords and the song is fine, no romantic lyrics in it and it´s clean, so it´s ok.  Finally, they got sick of hearing me play Hallelujah!  ^_^

Disculpome, forgive me that the letter isn´t too long this week. But I can finish it off with a good phrase of the week! This week´s phrase is ´´Me Duele Mi Alma``. This means ´´My Soul Hurts`` or ´´That Hurts My Soul.`` It actually isn´t a sad phrase, it´s used jokingly in Latin American countries. If someone tells a bad joke, someone would say Me Duele Mi Alma because it was so bad it’s painful!  :)

That´s all I have for this week. Hopefully we´ll have more Progress on Alexandra and Sanmi soon!  Until Next Monday! I love you mom!

-Elder Froude

AN E-MAIL FROM THE STEWARTS:

November 25, 2013 – The Stewart Family

Hello Froude and Rocha families:)

My name is Brianne Stewart. We had the honor of meeting your hard working missionaries this past weekend at their branch conference in Pueblo Bavaro. We have been blessed to vacation in a small area of their mission called Cap Cana. It is beautiful!!! We took your missionaries to our villa for lunch and had a great time showing them around this beautiful area. We have three sons of our own and love to take any opportunity to surround our boys by faithful missionaries in hopes that they will all serve a mission one day! It is wonderful to see the church is true and thriving all over the world! Thank you for raising faithful and wonderful sons that can lead and guide our own:)

Much love,

The Jarod Stewart Family

Jarod.Brianne.Isaac.Jacob.Zeke

November 18, 2013 – Vamos a la Playa

Dear Mom, Dad, Lauren, and Elder Froude 1,

Before I talk about my week, which was fantastic, I just wanna say that I WENT TO THE BEACH TODAY!!! AY MI MADRE!  IT WAS SO PRETTY AND FUN AND GAAAHHHHH!! The beaches here are so beautiful! I went with my district to the Beach in Bavaro, which is close to Punta Cana, North, I believe. Anyway, we just walked along the shoreline and took silly pictures because we´re silly people!  ^_^  For lunch, we ate grilled fish not far from the beach. It was run by this very nice Russian couple. That´s a weird thing, I wanna say really fast, there´s a LOT of Russians here! Not just in the beach, but inland too, in Pueblo Bavaro. Que Raro, how weird!

Okie dokie, now for my week! Elder Rocha and I have become contacting champs! We´ve done probably 40 contacts this week. President Tarvez, the branch president, taught us contacting techniques and now we´re getting contacts left and right! Of those 40 contacts, we met one that is particularly special. Her name is Alexandra, she´s 24 and has two kids. When we contacted with her, she started crying; she is really sensitive to the Spirit, I suppose. Since then, she has been super receptive to the Gospel! She couldn´t come to church this week because she was moving. But here´s the amazing thing; she has a job on Sundays so she wouldn´t have been able to come to church anyway, but for two citas now, she´s been reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. We visited her this past Sunday to see if she needed help moving, but she was already done by the time we got there. When we invited her to come to church the next Sunday, she said she´d quit her job and find another to come to church. AAAAHHHHH!!! FAITH ALREADY!!! It was definitely one of the coolest things ever! Our next cita, we´re gonna invite her to baptism; gosh I hope she says yes!

We´re also making good progress with Sanmi too! Our last cita with her we shared our favorite scriptures in the LDM with her, and she said that she really liked what she read from it and would read more! She also expressed her desire to be a member of the church. That sounds a lot like she wants to be baptized to me! We´re gonna invite her to baptism next cita too! The Lord has been blessing us so much this week. I thank Him every night in my prayers for the people we’ve met and for the Spirit that they and we can feel. I also pray for you all you every night.

I don´t remember where it says this in D&C, I think section 100, you all are in the Lord´s hands and he will protect you and guide you. He also protects His missionaries. For those of you reading, all missionaries in the Philippines have been accounted for and are safe. He does so much for us, the most I can do to show Him how grateful I am is dedicating two years of my life to serve Him and help Him gather his lost sheep. I have never been happier with any other decision in my life!  :)

Phrase of the week! This week´s phrase is ´´Que lo que contigo,`` This phrase is actually something I can´t use, not because it´s bad, but because it´s the slangiest of the slang here.  XD It means ´´what´s up with you,`` but in American, it´d be translated to ´´What it do witchoo,``which is something that missionaries shouldn´t say because it isn´t formal. Although, I use it for jokes and to be funny, but not to greet someone. In that case, it´s fine. Slang here is called ´´Tiguraje,`` language of the Tigure or Tiger. If you can picture the kids in America that are all about Swag and Yolo and all that dumb stuff, that´s a Tigure, or equivalent to a tigure. Next week, I will send some pictures of the members and investigators so you can get to know them too! I miss and love you all so much!  :)

-Elder Froude

P.S.

 “Vamos a la Playa” is a song that we all sang all day. Look it up on YouTube.  It´s Vamos a la Playa by Righeira. I know it because we watched it in my Spanish class in high school and it´s been stuck in my head all day!  XD  Be careful, it´s demasiado 80´s; just way too 80´s! lol!

I´m loving my companion more and more every day! It turns out that he´s a mimic too! He can do spot on Latino accents and I can do spot on accents in English; it´s like a match made in heaven! LOL!

 

This is my awesome District :) They´re all so great!

Bavaro trip with my District

Awesome beach!

Not a mermaid...a mer-MAN!  Hahaha!!!