Good week

April 8, 2019

Not much happened. Taught seminary, had zone conference, had lessons with the doolittles and destiny's fam. Destiny's mom brought a friend to hear us too which was cool. Watched conference and that was cool. Had a surprise non member friend watch it with the bishops family. Uchtdorf's talk was good and so was elder hollands and all of president nelsons. Thats all.

Elder Bertoch

Language Genius

Hi all. This week was good, but we had just about all of our appointments cancel on us this week, which sucked, but such is life. Highlights this week include the service with the holtzees this Friday. The zone leaders were with us in a blitx of our area, so our hopes were to get more done. But the only thing he really needed done was putting up insulation, and elder Powell refused to go near the stuff, so me and another elder tried for a while until he eventually gave up. So another elder came underneath the house, and he and I put them up. We finally figured out how to get them up there without falling out and got quite the efficient machine going putting up a piece about every 30 seconds, and we were able to cover about 1/3 of the whole base of the house which was pretty good. Newsflash, insulation sucks, I had fiber glass all over my body, and in my eyes and nose and mouth, and we didn't have time to shower right afterwards, we had to rush to Ronnie's interview. So the rest of the night was irritating. But Ronnie passed his interview and was very excited, the most excited we had ever seen him. After the interview we split off, on exchanges, we dropped elder Powell and the other one off at the densmores (aliviah is on date), then me and another one went down to Laurens to see Katy, but we ended up talking to Marlon (her roommate recent convert) most of the time. And we believe we convinced him to come back to church. Katie's date will have to be moved though sadly. And that was all that day.

Saturday was the baptism. It went very well, Ronnie was very happy and it was such a miracle that he got to that point. The baptism went without any obstacles really, which was very surprising. I even gave my talk in sign language about the holy ghost, and sister Sanders (the translator) said that it was perfect, except for one word. And Ronnie was very happy that I had made that effort. Many people came up to me afterwards and were amazed at how I was able to do that, and it was completely by the holy ghost, the whole talk was brought to my remembrance so I am very grateful for God allowing me to do that. The rest of Saturday was spent contacting members. We are trying to get members much more involved in the people we are teaching and have selected 3 families for each person/family. Which amounted to about 30 families. And so now we are really trying to get all of them on board. We are really pushing for each of our investigators to be in a members home for general conference. And so far we have 5 investigators commited to going somewhere, which is very good. 

Sunday was the confirmation of Ronnie, and that went well, we had people write it down so that Ronnie could read it afterwards. We had a great Sunday school lesson on how to budget, and save money, and get rid of expenses that was very enlightening, turns out all you have to do is be mature with your decisions. After church we didn't have a lesson with destiny's family which was sad. We had a lesson with aliviah though. They came to church and we had a very good lesson. We also had a lesson with Ronnie about the priesthood and the holy ghost helped out so much with his understanding.

Elder Bertoch 

Giant burrito - don't know if he finished it:

Pollen Disaster

March 25, 2019

Short little week this week and not much got done. The great annual pollen disaster of South Carolina happened this weekend and I was surprisingly affected quite heavily by it. Most of Thursday and some of Friday I was out of commission and I am still feeling super congested and every time I walk outside it just gets worse. The pollen here is so bad everything around here is caked in yellow and the pollen reading here has been extreme for the past couple of days. So that's been fun to deal with. But besides that we've had a lesson with some of the normal people. We had a lesson with Ronnie where we finished everything up lesson wise. His interview is on Friday and his baptism is on Saturday so we are excited for that. We taught another lesson with destiny's mom and brother and that went really well. Almost all of her concerns were rested on the plan of salvation and we were able to clear all of them up and now she understands everything. She'll be coming to church next week and is reading the book fo mormon each day as well. They also just recently started doing come follow me as a family, which is great as well. We had a lesson with Benjamin as well that went very well and we are excited about his potential. We helped with a move on Saturday morning. And that is about all that happened this week.

Elder Bertoch 

Staying in Simpsonville

March 20, 2019

This week was pretty good. Nothing all that interesting, just had some lessons and such. We had a lesson with Katie on Sunday and taught her the restoration and she liked it and she's already reading the book of mormon so, now all we got left are the commandments. We also taught aliviah the gospel of Jesus christ which went well. Ronnie finally seems like he is grasping some of the things we are teaching, as he can recite to us back the repentance process and when he needs to use it, so that is looking more possible for two weeks. We also started teaching destiny's mom and brother the restoration. Jennifer (destiny's mom) had a lot of questions but seems sincerely interested and we think that with destiny in the home helping her out she will find her answers fairly quickly. We've also started doing this super fun service at this less active part member family's house. They bought a lot of land and are building their house and a barn and a couple of greenhouses. So we went their and sorted through a bunch of stuff that the previous owners left behind (like 40000 dollars worth of tile and carpentry items.) We also moved a bunch of furniture from the house to the shed. And put up walls on the barn. On Friday we are going back to do the greenhouses. And that was about it for this week. Have fun love yall

Elder Bertoch 

A Happy Reunion

March 11, 2019

Well nothing happened this week from the days of Tuesday to Friday so I'll just jump ahead to there.

Friday we had interviews, ours were scheduled at 5:00 at night so we spent Friday afternoon weekly planning. Then interviews were up in Greenville so we drove on up there and got there 10 minutes before our interview just to learn that president was behind 2 hours. Which was a problem because we had a dinner with someone special at 6:30. Finally after interviews at about 7 30 we made our way over to Sixto and his family. Well, they forgot about dinner, but it was still super cool to see them, even if it was for a short time. Bibiana is now baptized and married, and they are working on getting to the temple as well which is super cool. So that day was all great and everything.

Saturday we had a bunch of cool lessons planned but they all fell through. So we tried to see a less active member but she was just leaving as we pulled up, so we knocked around her and these 2 sweet elderly ladies opened the door. We introduced the book of mormon to them and they loved it. We swept away all of there misconceptions that they had about it and now they cant wait to read it. And they want us back every saturday. So that was a success. Then we stopped by another less active, unbaptized children household and they told us to come back the next day, and we invited them to church and left. Then we met another member family that hasn't been to church since we've been here on account of them just having a baby. They were really cool and nice. Then we had dinner with the Elders Quorum President's family and that was fun.Then we had a lesson with a self referral named benjamin and that went well and he wants to meet with us every Saturday for a year, so that was also a success. 

Sunday was a good day. We had 6 people at church. One of them was that less active family we saw on saturday with the unbaptized child, they actually came to church because we invited them so that was really cool. Then after church we went and saw someone the members suggested we see, and we met with them and we have a lot of service to do with them now since they are clearing out a lot of junk from the property that they just bought. Then we had dinner with that less active, unbaptized child family and had a lesson with the child and put her on date for April 20th, so now Aliviah is on date which was very unexpected but pretty cool. Then we had a lesson with Katie and we taught her the plan of salvation an we were able to put her on date for April 13th. And the plan is to put Kelly and Kyle on date for April 6th, which would be 4 weeks in a row of baptisms. With Ronnie on date for March 30th. So if everything works out it would be quite exciting and quite the miracle. 

Thats all for this week. Still no pictures. Sorry.

Elder Bertoch

A Baptism and 150 days left

February 25, 2019

This week was really good. We had the baptism of destiny of course and that went super well. WE also have started finding Hispanics around here, and we know where most of the Hispanic pockets are. We also know just about all the ward members here.

Sunday we had church and we had 7 people show up for church. The 5 regulars and Katie and Kelly which have become pretty new and consistent since we have been here. Katie was pretty cool because she told us she probably wasn't going to go, so we drove all the way to laurens, knocked on her door and explained why she needs to go to church and testified that if she is ever feeling the adversary working on her, then she needs to read the book of mormon and she will feel the power therein and want to do the right again. We then left and and church she said that she read from the Book of Mormon after we left and she knew that she needed to go to church and there she was.  Then after church we had a linger longer and we had a bunch of ward members connect with Katie and Kelly, and after that we had a lunch to celebrate Gail's (Recent convert, mom of ronnie) birthday at the Couches. That was a bunch of fun and I ate like crazy forgetting that we had a dinner that night at the Payans. Then at the Payans we were fed tacos and I ate like crazy there as well and almost died afterward. 

Monday we had pday where we talked with the parents and had a weird time with that. Afterwards we saw the Martinez and talked with them for a bit and then we had dinner with the Suarez family. The Suarez family are from Colombia and have a daughter and have been in the states for 9 months. They fed us Arepas, which are very similar to gorditas from mexico and they are very good.

Tuesday we had zone conference which was really good. President there also told us that we were not allowed to call siblings, but if siblings just happen to be on a conference call when we call, then there is nothing we can do about that. Then after zone conference we met with destiny and went over the baptism interview questions and made sure everything was all good. Then we had 2 lessons with ward members where we followed up on commitments left to them 2 weeks prior about thinking about someone to share the gospel with.

Wednesday not much happened except destiny passing her baptismal interview.

Thursday we weekly planned and had dinner with a part member family which was good as well. 

Friday we had a  great day planned and we were super excited and then we drive all the way down to clinton for our lesson with Kelly and she cancelled on us, and then 2 others cancelled on us too. But we still had a dinner with the torres family and katie which went really well. Then we made the programs for the baptism  the next day and our day was over.

Saturday we had the baptism and it was great. We had like 60 or 70 people turn out for it. Destiny only needed to be baptized 3 times before she nailed it (the water was super low though). And so it was really good and destiny seemed to love it and everyone was so loving to her and it turned out great. Then afterwards we went to lunch to celebrate and me and elder powell got like food poisoning from it and we were completely and utterly sick the rest of the day. 

Sunday was church, we had a good church this week as well lots of people were there. Destiny got confirmed, Kelly went to church all though Katie was working.We had an all around good time there. Then afterward we went and knocked in a trailer park and we found Francisca from mexico and she was pretty interested. During our lesson some baptist dudes came up and interrupted us and started talking about there church, but all in english so she didnt even understand, so we ended up translating for the dude, and then he was like wait are you guys from a church, and we were like yeah, and he was like oh this is awkward and  gave them their baptist cup and left. So that was pretty weird but whatever so is the life of a missionary. Then we went and had dinner with bishop and his family, they served us handmade tacos and it was very good, I ate 6 giant tacos and 2 rice krispy treats. Then we went way out to Hickory Tavern and went by a part member family that bishop reccomend that we go and see, and then we went to another part member famiy after that. 

And that was this week.

Elder Bertoch

I dont have the baptism picture we need to get it from a member

First p-day phone call

This is the first week that the missionaries were able to call home on p-day.  Our call was actually very productive as we were able to talk about Jackson's plans for school and take care of a couple of other things.  Much easier than trying to do it through email. 

Jackson reported that they had to drop all but two of their investigators because they aren’t progressing.  The two left are Ronnie, who is deaf and Destiny who is getting baptized this Saturday.  They had to move Ronnie's baptism back because they can’t teach him often enough. There is someone who knows sign language in another ward, but she can’t help them more than about once a week.  Jackson said he can have small conversations with him and then he just guesses what he is saying.

He is in an English ward with only about 25 hispanics.  Only 3 don’t speak English, so he isn’t speaking much Spanish right now.  They are there to try to find more Spanish speaking investigators.  

He also said he is no longer driving - Elder Powell has taken over.  He said he’s been driving for a long time and he needs a break, because the roads and drivers are crazy.  He said there is a sign in Columbia that keeps track of auto fatalities for the year and at the end of last year there were 1,0006.  

That about covers it.