I am done training

This week was great! This last Saturday we had an activity with our ward that the missionaries planned and it turned out great we had about 70 people there. We had games and some people brought friends and we got to meet them. We all just had a great time! It worked out great exactly how we expected it! The members fed us like every night because Elder Gomez, our district leader is going back home and so we were pretty much fed this week!

One thing that was so awesome this week is that we went to a less actives house a couple of days ago. It is the Moronta family and and we were able to share a message with them. My comp started out and he started out talking about Alma and how he was a missionary and he was talking about how Alma didn't want to be a king and he wanted to serve. After my comp was done I talked about Nephi and how he had it hard when he was with his family but he persevered through it all. We could all feel the spirit there. The mom started saying how grateful she was for us and how we have helped her so much with her family and that we reminded her of the spirit and how great the church is. She said she is going to come to church this week so we will pray that she will keep her promise! Funny story this week haha I stepped on a nail while I was doing service and we were doing service at a school. After I stepped on it I cleaned it and everything and put alcohol and stuff on it so it could be fine but then the school was like you have to get a shot, a vaccine shot so I would be fine. So they took me to the hospital to have permission to buy a shot at a pharmacy because the hospitals are so poor so we bought it and the school payed for it. We went back to the school and asked the nurse to do it and so....,. she told me that she has to do it in the butt and so.....she did it and Elder Mata was laughing the whole time because first showed me how to pull my pants down by pulling her pants down haha and then when she was giving the shot she was slapping  and grabbing my butt to try to get the blood to the area haha yeah this story was one for the journal haha

This week was transfers!!! Elder Mata and I are still companions and he is the district leader now so more work for us! We just have to work harder at everything. We have two new missionaries in our district and they are pretty cool but we had to help out with transfers so that's why I couldn't email you yesterday but everything is great and I cant believe I have already been out for  4 and a half months that's crazy!!!

That was my crazy missionary week love you guys and miss you all! 

les amo, Elder Santacruz

Our ward at our activity this past Saturday

      

Doing service at a hospital looking cool in our masks

Tallest and shortest missionary in our mission

I finally had some Mexican food. We had to make it because Dominicans don't know Mexican food! Can you tell I missed it

My awesome scripture case

  

The mission is for me

hey everyone!!

This week was pretty interesting!

First we found out that there was a missionary in our ward and he is on a mission in Mexico, so we wanted to visit the family and see how they were doing. We found out who is was and it was a mom and dad that lived there and they were not members and so we sat down with the mom and the dad didn't want to talk to us so he went in the house. The mom talked with us and she asked us questions about the mission and the rules and then she asked a serious question she said, "why are you serving a mission? elder mata and I looked at eachother like this lady is crazy because she asked us really seriously. We told her that we are serving our heavenly father and she said give me a better answer than that. She said why can't missionaries talk more than 2 times a year? She said thats just wrong to not let their parents talk to their kids and so we told her its for the missionaries to not get distracted and she just told us that we are fools and that she will never go to the church. So we left and we decided we are gonna go back twice a week and ask her if we can help her with anything untill she wants to talk to us! 

Also we are planning a huge activity this Saturday for everyone. We are gonna try to invite our investigators and inactives but we are planning more activities so that we can find more people to teach because if the members come and they bring their friends then their friends might want to know more! Thats our strategy but the mission is telling us not to contact anymore and to just use the members to recieve references so we will try that! Our goal is to have 100 people their but one thing that is hard is that the ward doesn't really help us a lot and we dont have a bishop and we just have a bishopric we are waiting for a new one. The members had a problem with the old one. Yeah there are some problems with the ward but we are trying out best here. The problem is that the people here get offended easly and then they just decide they want anything to do with the church.. but we are trying to fix things.

Our investigator Kelvin didnt go to church this Sunday and so elder mata and I were devastated the problem is he visits his family every Sunday in Porta Plata and that he leaves early but we visted the next day and he told us that he still wants to get baptized and that he is gonna try his best from now on and so we are gonna work harder with him but. We have been working with inactives and we are trying to reactivate members because what good is it when the members are falling away? We just focus on our investigators but we are working with them and the members. They are so awesome and loving. 

Also transfers are next week and I could stay with elder mata or get a new companion or go to a new area but I wont find out till next week on Tuesday but whatever happens its for the best! These 3 months with him were great and I am excited to maybe have a latin companion to learn more spanish and to get better. 

I love you guys and that was my week! I hope you all had a wonderful week miss you all and pray for you guys!

Elder Santacruz

Elder Mata took me to a Monument today

People wear these for festivals

Dominican Republic

So many stairs to get to the top

At the end I will be glad

Saludos!!! bueno bueno this week we had a bunch of intercambios missionary exchanges and I went with other Elders in my district. What you do is you or the other Elder is with you for 24 hours and they go out with you at night and they study with you in the morning. I went with the district leader Elder Gomez and then I went with his companion Elder Martinez ha none of them speak English but... I was thinking when I was with Gomez that  I am getting way better with my spanish I can under stand a lot of things they are saying and they can understand me and with the people that we talked to I was able to do small talk with them and that was so awesome. It is such a blessing to speak another language and to be here in the Dominican mission. My companion and I had a talk one day before these intercambios because I was getting stressed with the language and he told me that my spanish is getting so much better and that this mission wasn't meant to be easy and that I am not gonna know everything but he told me that at the end of this mission I will be a man and I will be glad with what I went through.

Our investigator Kelvin is still progressing but we are not sure on his baptizism because he is taking time to learn all of it and that is just great, he also is very busy teaching he doesn't have a lot of time to talk to us but he is getting more knowledge and he is more accepting to all the things of the gospel. This week was great! One thing funny that happened this week is the assistants called me and  they asked me to train a greeny and I was so shocked and I couldnt believe it I was so scared I am not fluent in Spanish and they are asking me to train but it turned out they were just joking..... hahah thank goodness I thought I was gonna have a heart attack ha but everyone was laughing and it was hilarious in the end haha

but yeah that was my week and it was awesome love you all and miss you all!!!

Shout out to my buddy Braden Whitaker for getting his mission call Kansas Wichita mission!!!! atta boy! 

Elder Santacruz