Elder Cope

Marko November 12, 2012 1 Comment

Dear Family and Friends,

I’m really excited about this upcoming transfer – my third out in Beaumont!

Elder Cope

My companion is Elder Cope. To tell you a little bit about him, he is from Woods Cross, Utah. He’s played soccer pretty much his whole life, he played for Woods Cross High School. He has a pretty sweet motorcycle back home! He started his mission in Tampico, Mexico but after two transfers he caught a parasite and had to go home to recover. While he did, his visa expired so rather than wait six months to get a new one, he chose to be reassigned, so he got sent here!

Like I said last week, we have had the chance to serve together for a while before in the Galena Park ward, so we already knew each other pretty well and we are good friends. We have a lot of the same views on missionary work and how to do things, plus, he provides a lot of unique insights on missionary work and how it was done out in Mexico that will help us shake it up a little bit as far as things we do and how we teach. His Spanish is really good too, which always helps!

Well, this week wasn’t as great as the last few have been, but it was a transition week. Before, Elder Hatch always knew what was going on, but now this week I had to lead everything and plan all our days since Elder Cope is new to this area. So that’s been a pretty good learning experience and a little bit stressful, but its been good!

Israel Guerrero

The most frustrating thing for us right now is people’s free agency. So I guess that means that we are doing our job. We are here to invite people to make commitments, and they can chose to keep them or not. Well, Israel Guerrero had been reading in the Book of Mormon every day and we had a baptismal date with him, and he moved last weekend. He said he didn’t know his address, but he would call and give it to us when he knew it. We had been trying to get a hold of him all week but he wouldn’t answer the phone. After so much trying, sometimes we drop people like this and move on, but it’s hard because this isn’t just a normal contact – it’s an investigator with a baptismal date and he seemed sincere! So you don’t just want to give up on them! Well, yesterday we got a text from him saytng that he couldn’t make or receive calls, that he was in Houston, but he would come back today and text us the address so we could come over tonight. So at least we know that he isn’t avoiding us! Hopefully everything works out tonight!

Vega Family

Then there is the Vega family. Y’all already know a little bit about her from last week’s email. It’s been rough trying to see her, and it’s the same situation as Israel where we don’t just want to drop her. Yesterday we found her and she told us to come by this Wednesday night and that she would be there for sure so we will see what happens!

Beto and Yaneth

Beto and Yaneth are still waiting for their birth certificates. We’ve decided to just look for an alternate way to get them identification, maybe through the Houston El Salvador consulate. There has to be something that we can do to get them just a simple I.D. But they are doing good, they still love coming to church and are reading the Book of Mormon consistently. Just waiting to get baptized!

Raquel Ramirez

Every Tuesday night we go out with our branch president to make some visits. We had no idea what to do this Tuesday, so he told me to pray about it and then tell him where to go. So I did and I told him that maybe we could go visit Raquel Ramirez’s family. Her husband isn’t a member but he is really friendly to us and knows some of the branch members. She has expressed to us that she feels like he is ready to be taught. Well, we went by and had a really spiritual lesson. He loves his family and his kids, so we focused on families and the plan of salvation, especially since he has recently had a brother pass away. Then, we asked him if he would like to know more, and he said yes! So now we can start teaching him!

The Last Door

For our Hour of Power this week, we really had no idea where to go. We decided to try some apartments. After a while, it was obvious that there wasn’t any hispanic people living there. It was mainly African – American. We saw a man standing outside smoking. We asked if he new of any other apartments nearby. He pointed us in the right direction and we headed there. Well, there wasn’t any real difference with those ones. It was well past our hour, and we had to be back at dinner by 7 o’clock, but we just felt like we should keep knocking. We didn’t even say it out loud, it was just like an unspoken agreement between Elder Cope and I that we should just keep going. We knocked out a line of apartments and at the very last door (of course) opens a lady that just got here from Mexico with her husband and she was interested in coming to church. We had a nice chat and we set up a return appointment. Isn’t that a miracle? What are the chances that in our long turn of events we would have ended up knocking on her door and finding her?

Well, she called us the next day and said that she talked to her husband and they aren’t comfortable with listening to anyone that isn’t from the Catholic church. We tried to do as much doubt-resolving as we could on the phone, but she seemed pretty firm about it. We will probably stop by sometime soon to talk to her again, but the point is that we had an awesome experience with faith and perseverance and I’m sure the Lord was just testing our faith for the next go – around! It was a good experience for me.

South Park

It’s been pretty fun with Elder Cope. I really like to knock and am a firm believer that we have to be finding at all times, no matter how many golden people we are teaching, so we have been knocking quite a bit. Let me tell you about this place in Beaumont called South Park. It’s a project, and it is crazy! It’s crazier than any “ward” or “district” I saw out in Houston, and that’s supposedly the ghetto out there! Well this place is crazy! There’s just gangsters everywhere, and we’ve seen drug deals go down and prostitutes, and crack heads just walking around all crazy. It’s really been eye opening to see how people live and how that is just real life for them! We were visiting the Delgado family this week, and all of a sudden we here this super loud POP POP POP! Gunshots just right down the street! It was loud! Next thing you know there’s a couple ambulances and some cop cars tearing down the street.

We talked to this guy named Tyrone who had some pretty sweet dread locks and he said that our plaques were our “ghetto pass” and that no one would touch us with those things on. He said, “but man, without those things on y’all’s shirts and two white boys walking around here after dark, y’all would be done for!” At least that’s what we understood. What are we supposed to do? It gets dark here early now and we can’t just go home early for the night! Elder Cope has liked it a lot, there is always a story to tell from South Park.

The Avenues

“The Avenues” are a little bit safer but still pretty rough. It’s way more Hispanic than South Park though. South Park is 90% African American but there are some Hispanic parks and members in there. Then there is “South End” which is the “Crips” gang area and rivals with South Park which is “Bloods.” Man, I’ve learned more about gangs than I would have ever wanted to know haha. But South End is pretty bad and that’s where the English elders live.

Then, there is downtown, which has a pretty nice, old school downtown feel to it – but then you throw in the fact that it’s straight up DESERTED!! It feels like I Am Legend or some other creepy movie haha. The stoplights are working but there’s never any cars on the streets. Then there is “Old Town.” It’s not the ghetto but it’s not super nice either. Then there is North End which is a lot nicer and then there is North Beaumont where we live and it’s the really nice part! So we are really lucky! But we do all our work in Old Town and south from that which include everything else because the more north you go the nicer it gets.

Beaumont is probably the strangest place I have ever seen. Everything about it is just goofy. It has really weird, random smells and people. It really stinks out here and the water smells and tastes terrible. It’s probably all the refineries that are around here.

It has one of the country’s largest sea ports, though, which is pretty cool. They were hauling in some military equipment the other day but we couldn’t take any pictures because I guess that’s a big no no to take pics of government property like that.

Juan Padilla

We have some really good news from last night. We have been teaching that man, Juan Padilla, who I talked about in my last email. Well, it’s been a bit of a challenge teaching him, because we aren’t sure just how much he is understanding from all of this. We have taught the whole first lesson two or three times, as simply as we can, and although he grasps some of the concepts, he hasn’t had that “lightbulb” moment yet. Teaching him at his house isn’t the best either because, even though his brother in law who is a member is there, he has a wife that has bad feelings towards us and two daughters who, although they are adorable, they don’t really do a good job at staying still. So yesterday night we had a lesson at Presidente Garcia’s house. The daughters, by the way, participated in our primary program yesterday! Anyway, we went through the Restoration pamphlet word for word because for some reason or another, he still hasn’t kept his commitment to read it. He said that he is really stressed out by his persistent bronchitis and his looking for a job and troubles his wife is giving him for meeting with us. Well, we went through all of it word for word and then we watched the Restoration movie and introduced him to the book of Mormon. Needless to say, it was a pretty long lesson. But at the end of it, we were using one of Elder Cope’s “Mexico teaching techniques” that he taught me. When we were sure we had explained everything as well as we could, and sure that he had understood it well enough, we asked, “what would this mean to you if it were true?”

“Well, I would change a lot. I would become a better husband and father and follow God more.”

That’s a great answer, but it’s still really generic, and wasn’t the “lightbulb” moment that we were working so hard for.

We asked another question. “We have explained how you can know if this is true. And when you do that and you receive your answer that it is, what will you do Juan?”

“Well I would be baptized!”

LIGHTBULB!!! It was so legit! Elder Cope, President Garcia, and I just looked at each other and smiled. It was a relief because the last time we had invited him to baptism he said he had already been baptized Catholic which obviously meant that he hadn’t understood the concept of authority and apostasy, but this time he answered in a heartbeat that he would be baptized! He seemed really interested by the Book of Mormon and said that he would begin to read it. We set a baptismal date with him for December 15th. He is really coming along. It’s so exciting to teach people and watch them make the connections. I think the Restoration lesson is my favorite to teach. It makes sense logically, but it can also come with a strong spiritual confirmation.

I am going to hit my year mark this Friday. One full year as a missionary, one year to go. It’s pretty wild. I feel like I just barely got out here. At the most, it feels like it’s been five or six months tops. I know this next year is going to fly by, and it scares me. I don’t ever want to leave! I love it here. It’s just so fun, and so spiritual. I feel like I’m getting more of a benifit out of it than anyone I’m teaching is. It’s just awesome! Like the other day, Elder Cope and I had a long day of tracting ahead of us, be we had some fun out of it. There was this old Vietnamese old guy that was really funny and decided to start giving Elder Cope kung fu lessons right in the middle of our contact on his porch. Stuff like that just doesn’t happen back home. I miss home, especially right now in the fall and winter, but there’s so much that I love here.

Y’all have a good week! Love,

Elder Viitanen

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