Hey everybody! Happy New Year’s Eve!

 Things are going well here in the DR. There is a lot of work that needs done but I’m feeling better and better each day with it! We are making small progress every day and trying to better this area, and the Lord is helping. There is a lot of good going on, so here’s just a little bit of it:

We were with a family we haven’t visited for a while (because they don’t act). They haven’t had water for 15 days. When we got in and sat down, after the prayer, water started running through their pipes! Revelation.

Christmas was a good day! Calling home was amazing! It was weird but it felt so good! It was a fun day and I’m grateful for everyone who sent their love and support! Thank you for the letters prayers and kind thoughts! I talked a lot on christmas so I won’t talk about it too much!

There is this little boy in church who came up to us and was all like, “Look!”, and he had a notebook and a pen is his shirt pocket and he wanted to show us that he looked like a missionary. He’s so cool!   

There was an American from Florida we ran into and I noticed that he had a funny looking iPhone. Turns out it was the new iPhone 6.  It was huge!  It was cool to see though!  

We atually had a really good day at church on sunday. We had about 40 people there and it was nice to have them come! President douglas assigned one of his councelers to behere twice a month at church which is really going to help things run more of the way they should which will help! 

On one of my trips to Bonao this week the driver was listening to all this really cool American music. I knew a lot of the songs and I loved hearing a little bit of home even though it wasn’t mission approved music. 

I’m speaking the language better, not understanding it but speaking it. A sister missionary whom I haven’t seen in a few weeks told me,    “DUDE! YOUR SPANISH IS OUT OF CONTROL! IT’S AWESOME!” It made me feel good but I know that I have so much to learn. I get frustrated with this language but I can see how much I’ve learned and it helps!  

 One joke now here in Constanza is when we were walking with the sister missionaries at like 10 o’clock at night. I was so tired I tripped on a rock and I knew I was falling.  It was weird, but I had my hands in my pockets and I just kinda let myself fall.  I simply didn’t have the energy to catch myself.   I got so dirty!  I don’t know what happened, it felt like I was falling in slow motion. It was funny. Now one of the sister missionaries can’t look at me without laughing and she is always telling  me to be careful.

We decorated our house with New Year’s stuff and I also pimped out a family in our ward’s house! There is no Spanish word for ‘pimp’ so I made it up!   Pimpar!  I asked the sister, ” Podemos pimpar su casa?” She didn’t understand but her little girls like the decorations! I love my family and the fun stuff they send!

Things are going well here in Constanza.  I feel more and more comfortable and am learning every day. Thank you for all of the letters and support.  Thank you for your prayers and all your love!

Until next week,

Elder Oldroyd

Hey everybody!!!

So things are going well right now. In all honesty this week has been a really tough one. But through it all there is so much good and I’m excited to share it with you!

So one night our branch president called us at like 10 pm and said he was outside and had something for us and he surprised us with pizza!! It was so awesome! I don’t know why he did it, but it was very nice! He’s a good guy and we’re friends. Then last night he took Elder Gifford and I to a nice dinner where we had some yummy Italian food. He’s not perfect and he needs to be a little more humble, but who  doesn’t. AS a branch president he is trying, but as our buddy  he’s a cool guy.  He is very nice to us and I’m grateful for him. 

I got my first set of parasites. Don’t ask how I know, but trust me I know.   It wasn’t bad… just one day well, morning in the bano.

I finished the book   Our Search For Happiness by M russell Ballard.  It was really good and it was really helpful and fun to read!

I recieved something awesome from my family…a  backscratcher!! This is funny because I have literally said on more then one how nice it would be to have a back scratcher. Haha… so thank you family! Another amazing thing I got from my family was Lindor truffles. Oh my goodness! Those are heavenly.  They are like home in a little chocolate ball.  I also received a great little letter from my sister Kennedy that was awesome and made me smile. Thank you Kennedy!  I receive a lot of letters and emails. I am so grateful for any and all of them! Thank you so much everyone!

One thing that is a little new is that I might be in Constanza for a while. Orignally the plan was that Elder Gifford was going to train me, then train one other missionary, then go home.  But now Elder Gifford is making it sound like that is not the plan and that he is going to have President Douglas keep me here for a while and maybe finish with him then teach another missionary this area… gulp. I guess I will just have to believe in revelation. Who knows what will happen. I still might transfer out here soon.  I guess I’ll be fine with whatever, but I wouldn’t be heart broken if I got out of this little mountain town on January 13th when the transfer ends.  Seriously.

We had a member buy us coats as a present. She got elder Gifford a cool black one and got me a really umm…well it was nice of her.  Haha. It is a white coat that is very dirty and makes my white shirts pop and in big black letters it says   FLORIDA on the back.  She is so sweet.  I’m going to wear it to the Christmas dinner on Friday to show my gratitude. 

It’s cold here.  We haven’t seen the sun for a few days. Our branch president says it only gets colder throughout January and February.  

Well there it is. There were a lot of great things this week. But in all honesty, this week was really hard. I had some bad days, but I look around and see how much support I have and how many people love me and it is impossible to be sad. It has been difficult this week but at the end of the day, I remember that I’m on the Lord’s errand and things seem a little better. The support from family and friends back home keep me going, and I’m so grateful for them. Maybe it’s just the holidays.. maybe the language is the problem (Well, I know that’s part of it).  There are troubles with the church here, but after all of it, all is well. The Lord is with me and He has blessed me so much! 

I’m very grateful for this time to serve, these trials, and the blessing it is to grow as I build the Lord’s kingdom here in Constanza

Thank you for all the support!

Elder Oldroyd

Hey everyone! 

What can I say.. Things are going well out here! I’m happy and the Lord is with me. There are a lot of problems out here, a lot of work to do, and a lot of stresses, but overall things are great!  I’m seeing progress, getting better each day, and the Lord is such a huge support! I’m starting to really adjust and things are getting more normal and life is good. Here are some random thoughts from the week!

So I guess 2 weeks ago i celebrated Thanksgiving a week early!  haha Oh well. It’s been Christmas season since I got here in Constanza. I love all the awesome music I have on my ipod (even though most of the time it just makes me miss home hahaha) But I have some great music, especially Christmas music. I am obsessed with the song Glorious by RSS Dixon.

The food is good out here. I really enjoy la bandera (rice beasn meat) and i always avacado. The fruits adn veggies are so fresh and im turning into quite the chef. I make some delicous healthy food and its great! I also make some fun stuff like pancakes, or scones. Its easy with basic ingridients and im braching out more. 

I gave another blessing but I did it in English which is cheating but our branch president wanted it that way haha. We had a fun family home evening and watched a video called How Rare A Possession which was cool!

We were walking down the street one day and offered to help these people hang their Christmas lights because they needed it, so we spent a half hour scaling their house in our shirts and ties. Then we taught  a lesson afterwards of course.

I got bitten by a dog for the first time so thats fun haha

We saw this really tall 14 year old playing basketball by himself one day, so we started talking to him and shooting around with him. As we were there a group of 8 or so Dominican kids gathered around. I then challenged this kid to a game of 1 on 1.  If I won he had to read this pamphlet of ours. If he won he got these crackers I had in my bag. We agreed on a quick game to 5 points, so I untucked my shirt and started playing. I guess in this country you dont have to backcourt the ball so after my first miss he went right back up with it to goal and scored 1-0. Then my second miss he had a put back dunk to go up 2-0.  I tied it up at 4-4 then he posted me up and won the game… it was fun and he accepted the pamphlet anyway haha.

We had a zone meeting in Bonao this weekend. It was so much fun. I love seeing other missionaries.  They are so cool! Our zone leader Elder Flores is leaving which is sad because I love him.  He is such a cool guy and so funny. I will miss him. Our zone got t shirts and I don’t know why, but they are cool. I will send pics of them but it’s all in Dominican slang that I don’t understand. I have some good buddies in our zone and I loved hanging with them.   Afterwards wevwent to this little spot and for thevfirst time in forever I actually ate a cheeseburger and fries!! It wwas awesome!!

 I got packages in the mail and lots of letters which means so much thank you everyone!!

We got new planners and i customized mine and made it all cool with a pic of my family and the Santo Domingo temple!

Well, like I said, things are going well. I am focusing on the positive and I really feel happy here. It will only get better and as the trials come I know where I can turn for peace. I’m happy and really grateful for this chance to serve. I pray for you guys and am thankful for your thoughts and prayers as well.

Love 

Elder Oldroyd

Hey everyone! 

My time is short today so I am going to have to be brief. I am focusing a lot on the positive things here, and there are a lot of them. Things are going well and I am seeing the Lord’s hand inn my life. I am going to dive into some random highlights from this week. 

PS I cut my finger bad the other day so i have a big bandage on it so my typing is goingot be extra ugly this week

I had an awesome Thanksgiving lunch with my companion last Thursday (thank you mom) and we had a good time.I then broke into my christmas music playlist (And my mom loaded me with lots of great music), including my favorite Christmas song (The Christmas Song by Nat King Cole).  I love all the great music I have so it’s so great!

I had intercambios with our zone leader this weekend and he doesn’t speak English, but it was a lot of fun! We had a really good time and did some good work. I talked to him a lot and did a lot of the proselytizing work and it went really. One negative thing is that obese Dominican women keep breast feeding their children in front of me. I hate it.  It’s awkward and uncomfortable.

We were visiting someone in the hospital on Sunday and so I watched a little Sports Center on the tv in the waiting room and it was awesome!! I was trying hard not to, but I gave in. I’ll repent later.

We are not having a ton of success or progression with people because people simply do not do what we ask them to do or what they say they will do. But we are teaching a lot of lessons and I’m getting a lot of practice  which is very good. The language is coming a long okay.  I’m seeing progress. I’m not progressing as fast as I would like or as fast as some other missionaries but oh well.. I guess it’s all part of the Lord’s plan.

I taught a 15 minute lesson in our zone leadership meeting this week which was funny because I have only been here for 2 and a half months and I taught all these district  leaders who have been out for over a year, but it went okay. My Spanish went well during it. I gave the same lesson again in our district meeting on Monday.

I am teaching an investigator who doesn’t speak Spanish too well, so we take a member from Haiti with us and he translates into Creole for us.

One thingthat infuriates me is that we have to watch “The District” training videos. The other day we were watching them and the perfect missionaries were in their perfect ward in the US and they had this thing called a dinner calendar where members signed up to cook a dinner for them every single night. Are you kidding me?  I don’t even eat dinner! hahah Or have members!  ha ha!  Ay Ay Ay. Oh well those videos are funny to watch.

I opened a package form my ward and hung a cool Christmas tree from them. I also put up some other decorations and it feels a little more Christmasy around here. Dominicans put their Christmas decorations up in like October so I’m all caught up now.  

We had our last new missionary meeting yesterday. I won’t see all my MTC buddies all together again till the day we leave. But it was great to see them again and worth the 3 hour car ride to Santiago.

I wish I had time to say more. The work is hard, there are a lot of things that need to be fixed. But there is so much good and I am so blessed. I’m doing well and as I focus on the positive.  I am motivated to work hard. The Lord is with me and I am very grateful for Him. 

Until next week. 

Elder Oldroyd

Hey Everybody!

I’m so excited to email because I have a lot of really great things to say! Things are really hard out here, but this last week has been great! I have felt very comforted and truly felt happy this week! There has been so much good through out the bad so I guess i will just dive in to some parts of it.

Last Thursday we had zone conference in La Vega so we hopped in a beaten up truck and rode for 2 hours to the meeting. Previously we had been asked to bring a Book of Mormon with a picture of our family and our testimony written in the cover and a bow on front to give a way before the meeting. As we walked the streets I was

dreading giving it away. I didnt know what to say, or how to say it… but when the time came, I found a great lady, I talked about it, was able to say what I wanted to say, and she accepted it and said she would read it. I spoke okay (broken and slppy but okay) Spanish! It was cool.

We had some great lessons during conference.  I was called to be an example for one of them. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to teach with this, but I had to put my arms straight out in front of me and put a coin on both hands and both fore arms, toss all four coins up in the air at the same time and then catch them. The missionary before me tried three times and didn’t catch a single coin. Then it was my turn. On my first try caught all four! haha! I don’t know what was being taught but people thought I was cool. Later in the meeting we had

Thanksgiving dinner for lunch,  which was awesome!!

Elder Blake is in my zone so it was awesome to see him again and all my other friends in the zone. Later that day it was important for us to get to an apoointment outside of the city, so we literally sprinted thorugh Constanza to get there on time.  I  wonder what the Dominicans thought seeing these two white guys doing that.

I had to buy gas for my apartment which was new to me. Like a big ole tank of gas for the stove. So that’s fun.

I read/taught a family home evening on Mosiah chapter 3.  I encourage all of you to read it and write me back what  the glad tidings are. I learned a lot and it was realy cool.

Another family home evening we had this week was with our branch president. We made a big LDS version of Chutes and Ladders. It took a while but it looks cool and it was a lot of fun! I’ll send a pic of it.

I am starting to speak a little better. I still don’t understand a ton. But I am doing more teaching and can speak about gospel stuff okay. I have SO FAR to go but I am starting to see good progress.

One example of this is that on  Sunday,  I was told 30 minutes before sacrament that I needed to give a 15 minute talk. I did okay. I felt confident and said what I wanted to say. I didn’t stutter through it. I didn’t speak miraculous Spanish, but I think I did my best :) and the lord was certainly with me,…all credit to him.

On Thursday we were back in the car for our district meeting. I got so many letters and it made me feel so loved and good!  Thank you all for writing so much! It really helps!I also later that week got 2 packages which meant a lot! Thank you all!

With how much we travel around and all our meetings in the mornings and how long the food can take to cook, plus the fact that Elder Gifford hates Dominican food now, and we usually do what he wants to do, we eat out a lot. We go to this “Chinese”place which sells fried chicken and french fries, but also Dominican food. Those places are called pica pollo. I like them but I’m getting sick of them. Plus I kinda like la bandera.  I had some amazing juice again but it was complimented with a side of nasty oatmeal. The oatmeal was cold, rubbery, and simply gross. But there was so much of it!! I had to eat to be nice but it was a struggle.

I have had some awesome lessons this week. I have taught more. There are a few people who are actually doing what we ask them to!! They follow through with their commitments and it makes our life so nice and it makes me so happy seeing them learn and being able to explain the lesson we came to teach and help them understand it more for themselves. We were walking one day and we saw a house that had a   ‘i heart jesus’   bumper stciker on it.  Elder Gifford said, ‘Well, we’ll see if that’s true”,  and we went and set up an apoointmetnt with them. Haha.

We took some garbage to the dump after doing some service with our branch president. It was sad. When we got to the dump, he locked the doors of the car. We stayed inside it and people just came and ripped the garbage bags out of the back of the car and started going thorough our garbage to find stuff they could use.

We climbed up to the top of the small mountain by our church. I was really cool to see our area.The weather has been perfect htis week and we’ve even gotten some sun!

Yesterday i gave a blessing to a member in Spanish. It was hard and  I was nervous but it was so cool to see the lord speak through me!! I did it! I didnt give some fluent profound blessing, but I did it in Spanish!  I sealed the oil, blessed her, and did everything I could and everything the lord needed me to.

Things are going well here!! It is getting better! There is a lot of negative but there has been so much good! Things are hard and there is a lot of work that needs done!! But I know I’m here for a reason, and focusing on all my blessings and all the positives really helps.

I believe the lord has trust in me. So I must be able to do something here.

Until next week,

Elder Oldroyd

 November 12, 2014

Hey everyone!!! Its your favorite time of the week!! Time for another typo filled email from your favorite missionary!  I guess I’ll just dive right into it.

The people here are interesting. They are so nice and accepting! They will always listen to us and always welcome us into their homes, but there is such a laid back, relaxed, don’t have a care attitude in this country. It’s so different for me and it’s a weird adjustment.

People never keep their commitments. They all say they will do things then simply don’t. Why don’t they feel the spirit? Why don’t they understand that this gospel can bless them so much? Our message is true, we feel the spirit, I just want to drag some people to church and force them to receive a testimony. In Preach My Gospel it says, ” The majority of the time, investigators don’t know what they are missing until they have it”. It is described as,  after you receive a testimony, it fills a hole in your heart you didn’t know was there. And they don’t do the things to develop that testimony. This is probably how parents feel and definitely how our Father in Heaven feels. He knows what’s right, he tells us to do it, then we simply don’t. It’s frustrating! But I know that I am just the same way sometimes. We all are.

Studying can be stressful sometimes, because I want too and am encouraged to study in Spanish, which I do a lot of. But it is hard because there is a lot I want ot study in English too so that I can learn the things I need to learn as a new missionary. I am trying to find that balance and it’s getting better. It is hard though , doing my 12 week  training program for new missionaries in the field. We watch these videos of perfect missionaries speaking in their native toungue, who have big, supportive, helpful wards, family history centers, stake buildings, mission leaders, and all these marvelous resources we study about how to use, but don’t have available to us.

The church here is… struggling. We had 17 people over the age of twelve in church on Sunday To say it nicely and positively, I will use the words of my mission president, “There is a great church in Constanza, you guys just need to uncover it”

A lot of times based on my own limitations, I worry I cannot give this area the help it needs.  But I have had a lot of motivating experiences and I am ready to go to work. I listened to an amazing talk by S Michal Wilcox that basically said,   The Lord has commanded me to do it, so I must be able to do it.

On a more positive note, I have had some awesome experiences and some funny random ones. One night it was pouring rain so hard, so I went out onto our balcony and just listened to the rain, and felt really at peace. That was very nice. The following night the skies were actually clear for once so we could see so many stars! It was beautiful.

I had this really delicious juice that looked like tan milk with foam on top. It was called  jugo de alvena con limon.  It tasted like limeade and it was awesome. Also I mix a peach flavoring with a citrus kola real, “their version of sprite”and other sodas”,  and made a peach mango sprite that tasted so good.

One thing that was interesting was we walked 35 minutes from our church to meet a reference, and we went to a really nice neighborhood. Like nice houses by American standards. We technically left Constanza but these houses were cool. And in that neighborhood we actually got rejected a few times!

 I had to teach a 10 minute lesson during our district meeting which went well. I made an really embarrassing  grammar mistake for the first half that I don’t want to share, but the rest went well.

We have to cross a river by walking across a tipped over tree and I was helping a sister cross and extended my hand, and she grabbed my whole arm and kind of fell into me, and I felt like I broke the law of chastity!  hahaha! I guess that’s what avoiding girls like the plague does to you.

I have had some good talks with my companion. I learned something really really cool about the fall the other day. Saturday night was a HUGE party in the park here, we weren’t invited though. But it was packed and reminded me of the Las Vegas strip.

There are a lot of good things going on here. I will close with a scripture:   Jacob 4:7   “Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace , and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things”.

There is a lot of work to be done here but I have to believe that I can do it. I have great support from a lot of people! I feel like a Book of Mormon prophet: “And I, Tanner cannot write but a hundreth part of the things that came to pass in Constanza”.   There is so much going on I wish I could share, but I will tell you guys all about it in 22 months!!

Love Elder Oldroyd

November 4,  2014

Hey everybody! I hope everything is going well at home! I am just going to have to get use to these awful spanish keyboards so please forgive all the typos!!! Ha this week has gotten better and things are going okay, so here are a few random points from this week!!

We finally went grocery shopping which is nice so I have started branching out on what I cook. We end up eating out a lot though because of how much we travel. I will get to that later.  From last Thursday to Sunday we didn’t have running water because our land lord left on a vacation and never turned on the switch that pumps water to our second floor.  After many attempts of breaking into her house, and breaking our rope, we came up with a way to get water from her hose and then bringing it up to our house. That involved me scaling our balcony jumping from the balcony to a shed jumping down from the shed, filling up a bucket of water putting it back on the shed, climbing back up the shed handing the bucket to my companion then repeat. Her house is all gated off and locked up so believe it or not this was the most efficient way to get water. See the picture below.

I have started doing more teaching during our lessons, not in good spanish at all, but at least I have been teaching. One thing that was cool was I asked someone to be baptized for the first time and they said yes!!!

Here in Constanza we don’t really get sun. I dont like the gray skies but once i leave im sure that i will be dying of heat and dreaming that a cloud will come block the sun! It is a mazing how cold it can get here on this tropical island! It rains probably 5 days a week and my shoes get covered in mud, which isn’t bad because i can wipe them off. What was bad was when I slipped in the mud and had to go home and change my pants haha but all the dirt came off so were good!

One interesting thing was we were saying hello to some members, and they insisted we ate lunch with them. We went into their kitchen and there were about 80 flies buzzing around. It was awkward because despite us asking them to not to, as we ate their food, their daughters fanned us and our plates to keep flies away. It was so nice of them and completely unnecessary but they insisted!

 Like i said earlier we spend a lot of time in a car because we are so isolated. Our district meetings are about an hour and a half away by car. I try to study but I get car sick. It’s stressful trying to decide what to study because we teach so many lessons, and I don’t know the language. I  have so much to learn. It doesn’t help that I really only get to study the language 4 maybe 5 days a week. I wish I had more time.

Anyways. I hate driving to the   quote  “big city” for my district meeting and other events. I don’t like it because it takes so much time, it’s really expensive, but the worst part is when we go to this city with asphalt roads, big grocery stores, nice chapels for the many members, other missionaries, etc, etc, it makes going back to my little mountain town seem kind of sad. But, at least I’m not way hot like the other missionaries.  In the big cities there is so much cool stuff being sold. I would love to spend a day with 50 US dollars. You could buy some awesome looking replica stuff and a bunch of other un-needed things for so cheap!!

I’m too tall for this country. I duck a lot to get into buildings and the other day I cut my head walking into a person’s house. Good thing my mom got me one of those Tide sticks or my shirt would have been ruined!

Baptisms are hard here because 90% of Dominicans don’t ever get legally married. They have great families and relationships, but never legally get married. So that is difficult and a process.

We found out one reason why this area is so hard.  Its because about 2 years ago the president of the elders quorum went apostate and started his own church. SO that doesn’t help our cause. Whatever the previous missionaries have been doing here hasn’t been working so we’ve had some really good meetings and are coming up with some awesome plans to have success here. We probably wont ever see the fruit of our labors but as long as we are planting seeds we are improving.

On Monday our zone leaders came to go on splits with us then ended up spending the night at our house because it’s so far back to their area, but that was the plan all along so it was fun. They are both latin but I communicated okay with them and had fun! One thing the zone leaders brought were mail and packages form my family and friends!!!! It meant so much to get mail and it made my whole week a million times better. I got an unbelievably amazing package from Marci full off priceless junk food I now cherish.  Then I got another package from my family that really just means the world to me. But my  favorite part is all the letters! I love reading them and feeling connected. If you send a letter make sure to use an international stamp.

Yesterday we left at 6 in the morning to go the mission offices in Santiago for a 2 week meeting for the new missionaries.It was so great to see all my buddies in the MTC and speak with other missionaries! After a long day off classes, then we went to a store that’s like a Dominican Walmart to buy blankets and coats. After all of that and a little over 5 hours in the car that day, we got home around 7 at night. It’s cool to talk to missionaries who have been out for so long. They are so comfortable and confident in what they do. I can’t wait to get to that point.

My companion Elder Gifford is cool. He is a work horse!! He is not used to being on a normal missionary schedule since he was AP but that’s okay. For example, we don’t start heading home till like 9:45 some nights and at 10 pm if there are people out in the streets.  His motto is, “Well they are up so they can hear the gospel”. It’s a little stressful following his example of work work work because it’s important to do stuff like write in your journal and eat. Haha.  But he is adjusting and hopefully we can have a more normal schedule soon. He is an awesme teacher though and really helps me learn.

Well that’s it from me. I realized I’m a social city boy who doesn’t like being stuck in the mountains with only one other person to communicate with. But since I am here I am going to do a lot of good work, and leave this place better than I found it! I am confident and know the Lord is with me. May he be with all of you.

Love Elder Oldroyd