Happy Monday!

Hello family!


It sounds like everyone is good and happy! I’m doing well...ha-ha that’s not completely true! I got another Bot Fly in my other leg (oh look twins!) I managed to kill it and now it’s healing up well and the doctor said today that I will live (sigh…) It’s just another trial and something to learn from.

BUT MY HEALTH AS OF NOW IS FINE! NOTHING IS WRONG!!!

One Christ like attribute that I am learning and practiced this past week was my patience. This new companion that I have needs a lot of patience. He gets mad, depressed, discouraged pretty easy, but when he works he does a good job. He likes to blame everything on me, and says I talk too much when he doesn’t talk at all. He is an only child and before the mission he said he just played video games and soccer...didn’t work...didn’t study…?

But all in all he’s a good guy that’s just learning how to be a missionary. I think of all the little things that happen over time that we get mad at, they are usually stupid. If we get mad we can’t have the spirit and if we can’t have the spirit, we can’t work and if we can’t work we are just wasting time. I decided to be a lot more pro active, so when he gives me crap I just ignore him and when he doesn’t work, I work harder.

I reached all of my goals and accomplished all I wanted to do this week (as far as missionary work) so I feel awesome with myself. I didn’t have any problems with temptations, nothing.

Last night we came back to the house early, so my companion could use the bathroom. He was upset about something, I asked him but he wouldn’t tell me. I was sitting on my bed waiting for him, and I was thinking about all the stuff I wanted to accomplish that day (we set as goals) that we weren’t even close to achieving. It was already 7:00 pm and we stop working at 9:00 pm. I thought to myself, we still have two hours to complete our daily goals that we weren’t even close to achieving them. When my companion came back out of the bathroom, he was all negative about not having enough time to complete our goals. I was thinking to myself, "I have a freaking worm living in my leg that hurts just to walk, I have a head ache and a sore throat and I want to go to sleep, but not once have I complained this whole week". So I said, "Look if you want to have a crappy day, and think you’re going to have a crappy day, then you’re going to meet crappy people who are going to do crappy stuff and you will end up having a crappy attitude about the mission and life. But if you want to have a good day you’re going to have a good day, so stop complaining and make the difference."

He was mad after I said that but he understood. So when we left our apartment for the last two hours of the day I worked my butt off to contacted and talk with every person and achieved my goals. But the thing that I had to show patience with was my companion getting prideful and started comparing what we accomplished that day against what the other elders did and was kind of rubbing it their faces. (I guess it bothered me that we could have accomplished even more if he had tried to do his part) So I told him " Elder you have to be more humble and give an account of thanks to Heavenly Father, cause frankly....you didn’t do it yourself!” Ha-ha

Yeah, so now we kind of got a weird attitude to one another but I still treat him nicely. I’m trying to do more things in a more positive way and it’s working well for me and hopefully my companion will do the same and we will accomplish a lot more together.

Right now we have 2 baptism dates planned for this week

January 16
Nora
Evenor
Antonio

January 23rd
Domingo
Cliford
Samantha
Marta

As of now all them are positive and Hno. Domingo is just an awesome guy! He knows so much from the Bible he is practically a Mormon, just not baptized. We gave him the Book of Mormon and the first lesson and he accepted baptism. I have great hopes for this guy.

Still don’t have pictures of my new area…sorry, I will try to get some soon. Just got the one of my other Bot Fly leg.

Love you and thank you for everything. Be careful Kade! Carver and his family I want you all in one piece still by the time I get back. Love you mom and dad and everyone that reads this letter.

Elder Buck