Hello Everybody!

Well, another week has flown by and I’m sending another post home! Sadly to say I don’t have a lot of things to write about but I’ll see what I can think of.

Well, I guess I should say that we were able to set 3 baptismal dates this past week. One of them is a bit of a soft date. Her name is Isabel, she’s 17, and she’s waiting to get approval from her parents so she can get baptized. The other two were a couple of ninos who have had the lessons a ton of times, know the baptismal interview questions like the back of their hands, but their parents will NOT bring them to church to save their lives. We went by on Saturday to talk and see how they were doing. The kids had expressed big desires to go (and even told us the last two weeks they got ready by themselves and were ready to go) but the parents woke up late. We haven’t been able to go by and see them yet to see what happened yesterday. The thing is, in order for investigators to get baptized they have to come to church twice within a reasonable amount of time. The kids came once about 2 weeks ago so we are working really hard to get them there one more time. In order to help out the situation, we are planning on using a member of the ward with kids about the same age as them AND to try and get the parents re-activated into the church. It’s been a bit of a struggle but, hey, who ever said missionary work was easy? J

I’m also really happy to say that it rained a little bit the early part of last week but, since then, the skies have been clear and we haven’t had any more problems. I took my suits in last week to get dry cleaned but, when I got them back, one of my suits had a couple of tears in the pants. I was a little upset but I patched them up the best that I could. Thank goodness it happened to my every day work suit! J

All in all things are going really good down here. We have seen a bit of a decrease in the amount of work that we have which, crazy enough, has been pretty nice. We now have the time to put a little more focus into each one of our investigators instead of running around trying to figure out what we are going to do. We actually have this investigator named Laura that we had an AWESOME lesson with this past week. We brought one of the convert members of the ward to come with us. We sat down and talked a bit about faith, the lessons we teach as missionaries, the Book of Mormon,… a lot of things we hadn’t planned on talking about but we did. Towards the end of the lesson, she came right out and told us that “There isn’t a doubt in my mind that this book [The Book of Mormon] is true or that Joseph Smith was a prophet. The book talks about God and Jesus Christ, teaches us how to be happy, and things like that. Also, I do want to come to your church. I really like how, when you two (referring to us) come over with someone all you do is talk from the scriptures. I can tell that you have studied them and you know what is in them. I like that a lot!” We were shocked out of our mind when we heard this. In response, we shared paragraphs 8&9 from the Book of Mormon Introduction with her, committed her to pray to Heavenly Father to help her know what to do (or help her know what he wants her to do about the church) and to a little bit of The Book of Mormon every day. We have an appointment with her tomorrow so we will see how it goes! We’ve been praying really hard for her and have faith the Heavenly Father will touch her and that she will recognize/follow the prompting. Pretty Awesome! J

One last investigator note, we passed by Yolanda’s (she’s been an investigator for about 2 years and has had about 7 baptismal dates) on Sunday. We wanted to see how things were going and to see why she didn’t come to church…again. When we showed up, this guy came out and started to talk to us for a little bit. About two minutes later, Yolanda came and told us that the guy was her “husband”. The same “husband” that has been in prison for the past 10 months because he was caught by immigration! We were so super excited to see this because this has been one of the biggest hold-ups we have had with her. She wants to be baptized SOO bad but, because of her non-married, raising 4 kids by herself situation it was really hard for her to keep her commitments. Now, with her husband back, we hope to get the married. Re-teach both of them all the lessons, and get them baptized this month. This is another investigator that we have been praying SOOO HARD to know what to do. Sunday, we got her answer. They requested that we give them a week together (understandable seeing that it has been 10 months since they lasted saw each other) then to come by and teach them. We plan on stopping by this week to check up on them so we’ll see what happens! J AWESOME!!!!

Alrighty, that is all that I have for this week. I hope that my college friends are having a good semester so far and that my other regular readers had an enjoyable January. Remember that you all are always in my prayers and I deeply appreciate the prayers you offer in behalf of the missionaries. They are felt!!!! Have a FANTASTIC WEEK!