September 26, 2011 - Email to Family

¡Hola amada familia mía! (Hello my beloved family, I am trying really hard to speak like a prophet in Spanish)

So this week was CRAZY busy.  We worked super hard!

This is Elder Anderson and Elder Valasco leaving, they were in my district.  Good Missionaries Valasco is from Bolivia and Anderson from South Jordan Utah

So first off I finally got the package, it was perfect thank you so much I love it! One thing DON¨T PUT SPAIN UNDER THE ADDRESS TO THAT GUY!  My companion gets sent packages bigger than that for 12 bucks!  You SPENT 45!!!  Thank you parents I love you!  I have decided since you don´t go down into the basement I will just re-do all of it and live down there so you won’t be alone anymore and I can do all the yard work and lift stuff for ya´ll.  So other good news is little Elder Rodriguez (from San Antonio) got moved into my district so I get to see him tomorrow at district meeting.  He will probably take over this area next transfer and I will stay here in El Puerto for 2 more transfers at least (I think) so we will be seeing a lot of each other for awhile!  I am excited! 

The president of the branch´s wife asked us to go into the attic to grab something for her and we found this little guy, that would be a dead bird

So this week we set 6 baptismal dates!!  We had a big week the Lord extremely blessed us.  We had Zone Conference last week and they told us to challenge EVERYONE to baptism.  We did so this last week.  So we have:

1. Jorge Oct 8th

2. Betty Oct 15th

3. Henry and Paloma Oct 15th (They are a couple)

4. Erika Oct 22th

5. Angeles Oct 22th

6. Juan 29th

7. Jose 29th

So these people are the people who we are teaching right now.  We didn´t talk to Alejandra this week we don´t know what´s up with her.  She has cancelled on us twice in a row.  So if she calls us we will talk and most likely tell her if she doesn´t want to change and actually do it, bye.  It´s super sad and that is one less soul not saved, yet.  I want to save them all right now!  I know she will LIVE this gospel one day in this life or the next, she has already accepted it.  So Jorge we had a really good week with him.  We taught him and he is reading and he said he wants to get baptized and then he came to a ward party and got to know the members.  He is a beast!  But then he didn´t show up to church.  I know he had to work late Saturday night until like 8 in the morning maybe.  We are going to take him to General Conference most likely.  But as of right now he isn´t answering his telephone.  Betty she is awesome, I love this girl.  I pray for her sooo much sometimes like 10 minutes straight for her.  I want her to not be scared anymore!  I studied for like an hour creating a lesson about fear, trust and faith.  How Fear is the opposite of faith.  I found a load of scriptures and wrote her a whole paper and all to teach her and give her.  We had to fight kinda hard to set the baptismal date.  We told her it´s just a goal to work for so we know what we are working for not just here to chat and talk about the Bible and stuff.  She loves to read and study when she has time, she works a lot and lives alone and all of her family lives in Bolivia and they are going through tough times there.  So she is a little stressed out and she worries about everything.  I have studied a lot so I can usually answer her questions.  I am about to read the New Testament to help me understand the Bible and Christ`s life.  So pray for her to calm down and receive an answer that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  Henry and Paloma are new.  They are interesting and very receptive.  They are strange and well not very educated.  Henry is 50 and Paloma is 20.  That kinda creaped me out because I am practically 20,  that is me marrying my mother.  But they are super nice and accepted the baptismal invite if by then they know that this church is true.  Henry is from Colombia and Paloma is Spanish.  Angeles is a Gitana (Gypsy) or just Spanish, her husband is a member and she didn´t know that she needed to be baptized to live with God.  She said yes to the invite and we are going to work hard with her.  Juan said he will quit smoking by the 8th of October.  He came to church yesterday and had to leave twice to smoke.  Yesterday he smoked 20 cigs!!  That is bad but he said he was super nervous for some reason.  Jose still has a date but it is hard to meet with him and he is scared about keeping the covenants of baptism after he is baptized.  He still doesn´t know the truthfulness of this message.  He is really scared to about baptism.  Oh Erika is new we got her at the ward party we had.  The members bring a lot of friends then we look around like vultures and contact them, it´s awesome.  She is from Colombia and we taught her the Restoration and it was super good.  She isn´t married though so we cannot baptize her and she is kinda super Catholic.  We are gonna get them married though!  So that was the week!  We did work and I did a lot of contacting.  I got like 11 futures with the numbers of people on the street by myself.  I am getting good at weaseling people into listening.  But the thing is that people give you fake numbers a lot.  Oh well!  The chosen people won’t lie!  We have been blessed with a lot of work and we are working hard.  Oh yeah a helicopter crashed kinda close to our home last week but a forgot to tell you all that!!  That was pretty cool we got to see it!  So that is all and I love you guys soo much!  The package was awesome.  Tell Bry and the Altamirano’s that I got their letters and thanks you so much, oh Derek Preece too!  Tell them thank you!!! 

Oh Jude do my shoes have a warranty on them????  Because the Johnston Murphy’s I have wore holes on the inside of the back of the heals and they are starting to give me blisters, I forgot to take pictures I will get them to you next week. Thanks let me know if we need to send them or something.