May 18, 2016

This week has been pretty good. We did in fact have the baptism on Saturday and it was really cool to be able to baptize the young woman.  I was a little bit nervous to mess the prayer up or pronounce something wrong but it was fine. The next day, Sunday, was voting day in this country which can be a little crazy so we only had church for one hour.  Monday we had some memorable events. First, when we went to look for our investigator in an apartment we got locked in the building. The investigator wasn’t there and no one else was either. In the end we were locked in the stairwell for about 30 minutes, it was a little frustrating.  Then later that day the streets were getting a little crazy due to voting the day before, so the police shot a tear gas or pepper spray bomb thing into the intersection next to a house we were at. We had to leave the house to get out of the area. It didn’t hurt too bad but it definitely burned my eyes and the inside of my nose a lot!  The effects went away pretty fast too but that was a good first time experience with tear gas.  On a positive note we do have an investigator named Winifred who came to the baptism and church on Sunday.  She is progressing well and it has been really cool to work with her.  Her mother is also progressing a lot.  We are working hard and having fun too, tonight we will be having a campfire by the side of our house and making s’mores.  Miss you all a lot!

Elder Mifflin

May 4, 2016

The DR treated me really well this week. To start we finally did get the electrical problems fixed in the house. Our fridge now works and we can actually use the iron and have our fan on at the same time... crazy right? That has been really nice though. Well it rained a little bit more this week and my shoes got super muddy a couple times. The weather has been pretty nice the last few days though. I also have been a little bit better about exercising and Elder Jean (the Dominican Elder in my house) and I have gone and run a couple times in the mornings. We usually run to this huge white monument about 10 minutes away from the house.  I did get to go to the baptism in Conai but it was crazy!  All the powers of this world combined against me that day and I almost did not pull it off. I will explain it in better detail when we Skype, but for now I will say that I went down there with a member named Jason. It was awesome to see all of the people from my home in the DR and see the baptism. And finally due to the DR being the DR I almost got stuck in La Vega at night haha, but in the end I had to pay a taxi guy to drive us back and it cost like 800 pesos. It was a crazy day overall but really cool too.  We were able to contact some people this week with lots of potential so that has been good. We have also been rejected by the whole world too but that is life. We were able to put a baptismal date with two women that we are teaching so that was cool, they  should be getting baptized in June. Also the investigator from Rafey asked me to baptize her, so for the first time I will get to do the actual baptism. I am pretty pumped about that.   We are going to Skype from the church so hopefully the Wifi is better this time.  I miss you guys a lot and I am excited to talk to you on Sunday.  I love you all mucho!

Elder Mifflin

April 27, 2016

 It has definitely been an interesting week so far. This area is a lot bigger than the last one. We have to switch off between the two parts everyday because it is impossible to work in both during the same day. Part of the area is really poor. I have taught in areas super poor, It just at first makes you feel like there is not much that you can actually do to help. But, I am doing all that I can to teach them the things that actually will help them a lot.  We needed to take a less active man to the hospital for physical therapy. He is paralyzed from the waste down but also has some problems with his arm.  Also, we are starting to enter into the rainy season here and had a couple gnarly storms this week. In classic Dominican style the streets have flooded like crazy during the storms and we have had to walk through deep muddy river streets. In result to the storms (and I don’t know why) there was a big colony of cockroaches hanging out on the wall of our house. There were probably about 50 of them. So what we did is brush them off onto the ground with a broom and hurry and try to smash all of them as they scattered. It ended up being very effective and we were able to eliminate them.  We still do not have a fridge, we haven’t had one the whole week because the other one broke before I arrived here.  The office Elders brought a new one the other day but we can’t plug it in yet because the electrical wiring of the house isn’t good enough to support the fridge, let alone the other things we have to use.  Elder Navarrette is cool and it’s been nice to talk to my comp in English!  There are tons of mosquitos, I have to turn on my fan at night not because it is too hot to sleep, but to protect me from the mosquitos.  I love you all and hope that you have a good week!

Elder Mifflin