Our apartment is in Heredia Centro, near the Heredia soccer stadium and the 'Palacio de los Deportes'. Our direccion is 100 Norte del Hospital Viejo de Heredia, frente Restaurante Chino Lago de Plata, puerta cafe (100, North of the old Heredia Hospital, in front of the chinese Restaurant “Silver lake”, Brown Door)*Ü* I say old hospital because they are building a new Hospital, its the biggest in Central America, and the coolest Hospital I've seen. Its dark blue and silver and has a cool design. We pass it all the time. Its basically complete, but not in use yet.
Hna Gladys (cocinera/cook) lives just around the corner. We have to cross "the road of death" to get to her house though. The church is in 'Cubujuqui', near centro. Other areas we work in are Fatima (where Patricia lives), Guarari, La Milpa, Los Lagos, Mercedes Norte, Mercedes Sur, Barva, Birri, Carpintera, and Corazon de Jesus.
This week we visited a lot of less active members, as part of the new Mission Plan that was given this past year. The plan requires 15 names of people that are less active, are non-members, have future elders in the family, or are part member families. The names are chosen by the Elders Quorum, Relief Society, and High Priests, after prayer and meditation. After the names are chosen, certain leaders from the ward go to visit the people on the list, and invite them to have the missionarys start visiting them as well. If they accept, the names are given to us and we begin to teach them. Its been kind of hard to get the plan up and going. Supposedly, the fifteen names the ward has chosen have been visited by a ward member, even though no one could tell me who visited them and they didnt give us directions on how to find the people either. When we visited them this week, some of them didn't remember being visited but in the end, most of them were happy to recieve the missionary's. This next week we are going to get a new list put together, because there was even some confusion in the ward organizations about who was actually on the 15 names list. So we are going to keep working to get this program running continuously, smoothly, and effectively.
This week we also worked a lot with two guys preparing for the mission. One is named Samuel. He is planning on going on a mission this next year and he accompanied us two days this week. We also went to work with Rolando. Rolando leaves on his mission to the Northern part of Chile, this next month. He is really excited and came with us on Saturday. We try to go on divisions with as many jovenes in the ward as possible, and this week we were also accompanied by Erick Diaz.
While visiting less active members, we found out that in Guarari (one of the poorer parts of our area) there are over 300 members, but they are all inactive. We visited a few of them that haven't been to church in like 10 years. We are thinking of starting neigborhood Family Home Evenings in Guarari, which might get the people excited about going to church again. The bus that will take the members to church in Belen, starting in March, leaves from Guarari, so maybe that will help people start going to church.
Today we started P-day out by going to a Funeral. Hna Angelita's (The missionaries cocinera in Flores) adopted son Geraldo has been in the hospital here, down the street from our apartment, for a couple days, becasue he had convulsions and had some virus. He died yesterday afternoon when he had a heart attack. He was 28 years old, but was partially mentally and physically handicapped. Today at 10 in the morning we went with Elder Hansen, Elder Recino, Elder Zavala, and Elder Smith to the burial. It was sad to see Hna Angelita and her son Joan, (who always plays soccer with us and goes on divisions with us in Flores) crying. The other day when we passed by the hospital, Joan was outside waiting for news about his brother, and we talked to him and he was really worried, and today he was very sad. Although he will be missed, we know that Geraldo is in a better place, resting from the pains and worries of the world. We also know that because of our saviour Jesus Christ, Geraldo will one day resurrect and live again, and his family will be reunited, never to be seperated.
We have some good new investigators. One is named Sunilda, and we are going to visit her today. On Sunday, Natalia and Daniela brought one of there friends moms to church. Her name is Nidia. She liked church a lot and we are going to teach her tomorrow.
Paz.
Tobler
