This is his work and his glory

This week was just great we have been working our butts off! We have new investigators and one of their names is David and he is 33 years old. He has been taking the lessons with us and he is awesome! We have gotten really close to him! This last Monday we talked to him about faith and we asked him how he can show his faith and we told him faith is important to have but that he need to show his faith! Keep doing all the things the Lord wants him to do like search ponder and pray! We told him to act to show his faith and that he will receive an answer. We told him that these things are true and at that moment we felt the spirit so stong it was so great! I had the courage to invite him to get baptized and and HE said yes!!!! He said to us that he loves when we are around him because he learns so much more and that we are like his friends and so he asked us if we could come everyday and teach him. It was so great! We were like heck yeah! So we have been visiting him everyday and teaching him, its great!

Also this week we had a meeting as a zone and president was there and he gave a talk and told us how we make goals for each month and he was telling us our goals for March and they were pretty high but he was so happy that we want to work hard! The things that will help with the work is being obedient because there is a lot disobedient missionaries. He said that at some times we may ask ourselves well their not being obedient so why do I have to? When I heard this I was like I know Heavenly Father has helped us so much because we have been waking up on time, leaving when we should be leaving, and following the rules. President helped us to keep on going and keep working hard so that definitely was great! His words were so powerful! I loved it!

So remember that missionary that wanted to go home his name, yeah he decided to stay!! He told me that and I was so glad he is a real cool guy I know he is going to be thankful for his decision later in his life!!!

So familia Moronta..... are acitivated and now they are active members of the church😁😳. When Elder Mata and I saw them at church we were so happy!!!! I know that we haven't had a baptism since January but we definitely have reactivated families and thats just as wonderful! I am so happy with the work that we have done!

I know that our work as members will give us blessings and that even better we are doing the Lords work! We get to see many miracles and I have never seen how much the spirit works. As members we need to take advantage of it. It is one poweful instrument, and Im so thankful I get to use it because it works through us! Lets strengthen the work! 

I know that this gospel is for each and everyone of us! Let us share his love and show how great it is!

Elder Santacruz!

This is how far service goes

We teach him Spanish he cuts our hair

PUPPIES

Members have puppies

Putting them to good use

The Lord Blesses

This week was something we needed! Lately our investigators have not been progressing and we have been trying our best to work with them. Kelvin has been really busy and he rarely has time to talk to us. That was hard for me because he was on fire, he did everything  we asked and then he just stopped all of a sudden. He felt the spirit so many times with us and everything was good but we arent done trying! We go by and talk to him and have a lesson when he has time but that's just the mission for you. Sometimes people that you love so much will just stop participating in the gospel  but that just tells me that it wasnt their time but it definately helps me to think that I helped them get that far! We will see what happens I am not done with this area! The thing we fasted for this Sunday was to be able to find more people to bring the gospel to. The Lord has already blessed us with so many more people!!!!!! It is so great!!! We have been talking to a young boy, his name is Carlos and he has a brother on a mission in Mexico. His brother is the only member in his family and so we have been giving him the lessons and he has been reading everything we have asked him to read. i

I asked him to be baptized yesterday and we set a date of the end of March and he accepted and we told him that if he does  the things we tell him, he will know that this gospel is true! Right then I knew he trusted us and that he will do these things! I have faith in this kid! We invited him to church this Sunday! I will pray hard for him! He is the coolest kid ever, he is so funny! We love going over to visit. We have been working harder this week and we have been doing really good with our numbers. I am so happy that heavenly father will help us with all the things we do!

This week was definatly great! The lord never seems to stop helping us. I am so thankful for that! Love you guys so much! Miss you all, that was my great week! Have a great week! 

Shout out to Skyeler McCook for putting in his papers! love you dude!

Elder Santacruz

Perseverar hasta el fin

This week was just great! So did I mention we haven't had a bishop for a month? He moved to another stake and so we haven't had a bishop to work with us and it has been hard to bring the less active to church without a bishop to help. This Sunday someone was called and he is a good member, but now we hopefully can help the less actives, its been hard for our district because none of our investigators have been progressing as much as we want them too. I'm not gonna lie its been pretty hard but I know things will get better. We have 3 main investigators that have baptismal dates, and the thing that they are struggling with is not going to church. What we've been doing that I know will work is we have been bringing members with us to meet them so that when they go to church they will know more people and not feel like they just know the missionaries. I know little by little things will get better!

So we have a family that we really like because they are so cool. They were less active and now they are reactivated and they always feed us which is awesome! One of the daughters is on a mission and there is another daughter that hasn't gone to church in 6 years but now she is reactivated and she is going through a repentance process so she can fill out her mission papers!!! We are so proud of her! Next time I'll try to get a picture with them but we are so happy for them!

We also did a lot of intercambios this week. One missionary in our district is not doing so good he is home sick and so Elder Mata has been helping him out because he doesn't want him to go home. We all don't want him to go home! We all have been trying to help him out in, hoping he doesn't decide to go home but we will keep praying for him. 

I know this mission is hard and at times it can be hard when the work is not progressing. This work is not easy at all but I know that Heavenly Father has helped me through my tough times here and that he makes this work wonderful. He makes me look at this as a blessing, that being here is the greatest thing ever. I have seen so many blessings and I know that my faith has grown stronger than ever! I know that this gospel is true without a doubt! That we are here to have a purpose in life and that we can be with our Father in heaven again. We all just need to endure until the end in any situation. I LOVE this gospel mushisimo! and I LOVE YOU ALL so so much and miss you all! This is God's work! Lets do something about it! 

Elder Santacruz

Sometimes I get a little distracted when I'm doing my studying

Found so machetes! 

Miracles do happen

This week was amazing! It all started on Sunday! We have been working with the Moronta family. They are a couple that has a boy and the mother has been a member for 8 years and the father is a returned missionary. They are so cool, we have been visiting them for about a month now and we have been trying to help them go to church and this Sunday they went to church!!!!! Right there was a miracle that I saw. They haven't been to church in 2 years and we are gonna keep working with them so they will be active again. When Elder Mata and I saw them sitting in church Mata said how work pays off and I definitely felt really happy for them! 

This week we also have been teaching a new investigator his name is David and we have been teaching lesson . So far he is doing great, he has been reading and praying and he is doing great! This week he said he is gonna go to church so lets see if he comes we will pray for him! Kelvin has been slacking and he hasn't been coming to church. Every time we have a lesson with him its so spiritual but he hasn't been coming to church so we will keep working with him! 

We had an intercambio this week and I was with Elder Sheffard for a day and he is new in the area  and in the district so Elder Mata wanted me to get closer with. He is the big football dude from Utah and one of things that President told Elder Mata was that he is not enjoying the mission. Through out the day he was telling me about him and that a lot has happened to him and that he doesn't really want to be on the mission. H said that his last companions were pretty bad! We definitely had a fun time working and being together! This transfer I want to try to get close to him so that he doesn't feel like he is alone here he seems cool already.

This past week I realized all the miracles that have already happened and I am so thankful for them! I am doing great! Time is flying by too fast! Love you guys! Thanks for your prayers and your support!

Elder Santacruz

Happy Valentines Day

The Pizza Mom and Dad ordered all the way from Tucson  because I haven't had it and have been craving it.

What I am wearing is called Tubees, all the females wear them to keep their hair nice while they sleep 

Playing Soccer 

Happy Valentines Day from Elder Santacruz and Elder Mata

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