1-26-16

Hello how are you?  Anyway another great week.  I'll tell you a secret, it's really hot here but not as humid as my last area.  You'd wake up at 7AM and it was already hot and at 9 you are walking and sweating.  Here it's a little dryer so it doesn't get really hot until about 10AM.  Plus I don't sweat as much because of the lower humidity.  I really like it here. 

Last week we taught a lot!  There's so many great people.  The first week we gave a blessing to a member's sister.  Her name is J.  She finally got out of the hospital .  We had gone by to visit her and it was really cool because we went on Wednesday and she accepted everything and gave her a priesthood blessing.  We gave her a Book of Mormon.  We went back Saturday with some members and she was telling the members about us coming by and blessing her  and then the next time I went to the hospital they told me to go home because I was healed and she knew that the blessing healed her.  It was really cool.  I think because she had that experience she'll be able to progress easily.  I doubt she's married.  I doubt anyone in this town is married.

We have this girl named R and she's been to church about 20 times  but she's not married.  We talked to my old companion in Formosa and he can go get the papers she needs and send them to us.  Hopefully we can get her to the baptismal font.  Wait, time out, there's no baptismal font, we baptize here in a members back yard in a very small pool.  It's like the pool we had except smaller.

This week we will have a baptism, R.  He is doing good, he is the son of one of a faithful member here.  I don't know why he wasn't baptized.    The very first week as we were getting to know people my companion said he wasn't baptized and that surprised me.  We taught him for 2 weeks and he's getting baptized.  He asked me to baptize him so that will be the first baptism in Las Lomitas.  Woot woot, and many more to come!

This week we went to a less active family with the ward directory and we just read everyone's names and the member told us where everyone lives.  This past week we've been visiting.  We probably found 5 or 6 less actives and every single one of them has someone in their family to teach and baptize.  These less active people haven't had contact for the church for 10 years so they are pretty prepared to learn.  They just literally didn't have a church here to attend.  We've possibly found a church.  It's a nice building that is 15' x 12' with an office and a kitchen.    We're sending the papers in to get it approved.  Maybe by the end of next month we're hoping to have a church.

This Sunday there were 19 people in church.  That actually wasn't very good, a lot of people didn't show up.  There were 2 returned missionaries that showed up with their moms.  They live about 7 hours away and are traveling to Cordoba temple and have family here and so they went to church.  That was really cool, they both served in Brazil. 

In my old area we were teaching a girl named M.  She's getting baptized this weekend.  Elder Tapia told me that she's been through a lot.  Her whole family is against her getting baptized and she has to be interviewed by President Franco.  She's been through a lot and has a great testimony.    She has some good  friends in the church too.

We cooked some sloppy Joe's, whewwwww  some American food.  We haven't had too many lunches so I'm starting to use the packets you sent me.  There's a really cool family in our area that fed us lunch.  I took a picture with them.  The one with four kids and a mom and dad.  They are one of the coolest families I've met in my mission.  They are about to get sealed in the temple so that is special.  We had the lunch with the group leader too that lived in Texas.  

This week a Jehovah's Witness told me that my salvation is in risk and that I should repent.  I testified clearly to him that Jehovah is Jesus Christ.  He kind of got mad but that's alright the wicked taketh the truth to be hard.  It's actually kind of sad because they are so close to the truth (sort of) but they are just blinded by the craftiness of men.

Yesterday I didn't write because we had interviews with President and that's why I didn't write.  It took up the whole day.  We woke up and tried to get the 7AM bus but we were told the 7 o'clock bus doesn't exist anymore so we had to wait until 9 o'clock bus.  It takes about 2 hours on the bus to get to where the zone leaders live and there's a big church there.  It's the district building.  It would probably be an hour driving but 2 hours on the bus.  We went to take the 4:30 bus but they didn't have it any more and the next one wasn't until 7:30pm.  What can you do? Nothing because we don't have a car or scooter, just our feet.  

Las Lomitas is super dusty so all of my shirts are turning super yellow, kind of cool.  The other missionaries know that you work hard and are an old missionary when your shirts start to turn yellow.  I guess you could say I work hard and I'm old in the mission. 

That's about it, love you guys.  I hope all is good there in Utah.  I'm having some great experiences and we're are praying for miracles every day, trying to follow the spirit, be obedient and just loving the mission. 

Kiss kiss, hug hug and we'll see you later.