Awesome Week

Yep it was another awesome week! How was everybody else's? Man things just keep getting better and better and better. I had a really good birthday. My birthday here was actually 3 days long because 3 different families invited us over to celebrate but we couldn't do them all the same day. On Tuesday night we ate with a couple and she got my favorite food from here...fried fish. Its so good. She made us strawberry smoothies and a cake with candles and the whole works! It was awesome. On Wednesday we ate with the Benitez family and they made me a cake too. Some of the young single adults made me a card and signed it. On Thursday we ate with the ward mission leader and they sang to me and gave me some chocolates and a card. Their son drew a picture of me on the front of the card. I'll have to take a picture of it and send it next week. But anyway it was a really good week. Patricio is doing great. He has come to church every week and his date for the 26 is still on. Oh and great news! Isabel came to church yesterday and when I asked her when we could visit her this week she asked me what she had to do to be baptized!!! I was so happy. I knew we shouldn't give up on her quite yet. After she called us that one time and said she didn't believe in God anymore and didn't want anything to do with the church, it made me sad but I knew she was just passing through a hard time. So we gave her her space and wrote her a letter telling her that we loved her and then on Christmas we sang her a Christmas Carol. Then a returned missionary came back and has started to help her son out that has a couple of problems. I think that opened her up a little bit. Just lately we have been seeing her in the street, passing by her house and letting her know we haven't forgot about her. And then she mentioned baptism!! I was so happy. We need a lot of help from the members though so the same thing doesn't happen. She needs friends in the church and a lot of support. But I'm sure she will be baptized. We just need to work. Everything is going awesome right now and the mission is super excited. I'm excited too haha. Today is going to be fun too. We are going to go play soccer and an elder is going to bring some baseball gloves and a baseball that his parents sent him. He wants to throw and I can't wait. Its been so long! Hopefully my shoulder doesn't act up. Well family and amigos I love you tons and I know the church is true. Thanks for everything and have a great week. Bye bye

I'm old

Dear Family and Friends,

Holy cow I'm getting old. I think hair is starting to grow out of my ears. No not really but its sad to say I do already feel the effects of age on my body. I can't run around as much as I used to and when I do I am sore for 3 days afterwards. Its quite depressing haha. But anyway how is everybody doing?! I'm doing really good. We had another awesome week. 3 of the last 4 weeks we have taught 20 or more lessons which is the mission goal. I am really happy about that. Patricio still has a baptismal date but we had to delay it to the 26th of February. He said he just doesn't feel like he is ready right now but he is sure he won't pass February. He is doing awesome and he has come to church every week for the past 4 weeks now. Our family home evening with Manolo went really good. He didn't come to church yesterday and according to one of the members its because of his wifes influence. She doesn't really want him going. It kind of stunk because the talk I gave yesterday was pretty much prepared for him but it still turned out good. The members seemed to like it. Even though speaking in sacrament meeting isn't as hard for me now my legs still shake uncontrolably and I don't know why haha. I spoke on Christ's life, mission, atonement, teachings, death, and resurrection or to sum it up i spoke about His Gospel. Then I spoke about the first vision and how much it means to the world. My message was that we as members have the best news in the world and that is why we should share it with everyone. Yesterday a member named Chari brought me a cake made out of candy that she made. I'll send my mom a picture of it. She is one of the nicest ladies I've ever met. We didn't find any new investigators this week but we are still moving right along. The mission as a whole is doing awesome. We had a meeting with President Clegg on Saturday and as always it turned out really good. I didn't have to translate which was nice this time. I got to take notes. Well everybody I'm going to leave you here. I love you tons and I know the church is true. I know Christ lives and that there is so much we can do to serve him. Have a great week thanks for all the emails this week. You're the best I could ask for. Talk to you next week!

More Investigators!

Hi everybody! Well we had another awesome week. How was everybody elses? We were blessed with two more new investigators this week with a lot of potential. One is named Laura. She is a mother from Mexico that had been talking through emails to a member that is from Mexico too. So the member invited her to church and she came yesterday! It turns out she had gone a couple of times in Mexico as well and she wants us to come visit her. We have a family home evening set up with her for this week. We are excited to get started with her. The other investigator is named Manolo. He is the husband of a members cousin. We met him when he came to the Christmas party and the member asked us to pass by his house and give him a pamphlet of Joseph Smiths testimony. So we did that and yesterday he came to church. He really liked it and we are having a family home evening with him tonight. We are really excited for it. Oh and we have big news for Patricio. We set a baptismal date with him for the 29th of this month. He said he wants to pray and talk to his family about it first but he said he wants to do it. I hope it all works out! He is a great guy and is so excited to learn all that he has been learning. Last night we also had the fireside with President Clegg and the two wards here in San Fernando. I was really stressed because we had been trying to plan it for months now and since it was finally happening I wanted everything to turn out good. And it did. Both of the Bishops spoke along with President and Sister Clegg. We filled the chapel so I was really happy about that. Next week I get to speak in the second ward and I'm actually looking forward to it. Its going to be a really good opportunity to let the ward know I'm excited to be here and that I expect to see miracles happen in the next couple of months. I really love the two wards here. They are really involved in the work and helping us like crazy. Everything is already starting to change. I don't know if I already said this but the stake had baptized about 21 people from January to November of last year and in December alone we baptized 10. This stake is going to be the baptizing stake again and I feel blessed to see it all happen. We have a meeting with the Stake President this Thursday and we can't wait to let him know everything we have planned and the vision we have. Well family and friends I love you tons. I know the church is true and I know that miracles happen when we exercise our faith. Have an awesome week. Talk to you later!

Investigators falling from Heaven

Good morning everyone! How are you all doing? I´m doing awesome! Like my subjects says, we have investigators falling out of the heavens! Its so cool to see how the Lord works. We have been contacting in the street and knocking doors without success but the Lord is still blessing us. I already told you the story about Patricio that we found in the youth activity in the church. Well, he lives with a bunch of people and one of them is a Bolivian named Javier. He brought him to church on Sunday and it turns out that he met the elders 2 years ago and knows a little bit about the church. We have a family home evening set up with both of them tonight! Also I´m not sure if I told you but the stake president President Lopez gave us a referrall a week or two back and we taught them for the first time last monday. They are a young couple named Enrique and Pilar and they have a lot of questions. They had actually been asking President Lopez a lot about death and where we are going to go when we die. He told us about all this so we decided to teach the plan of salvation. It turned out awesome! When we got done teaching Pilar told us how much she liked it. She said she has always been scared of dying and sometimes she can´t even sleep at night she is so worried about it. She also said she hates the thought of not being with her family after she dies. I just thought wow we have the perfect message for you. We have an appointment set up for tomorrow night and we are going to teach the rest of the plan of salvation we weren´t able to cover and talk a little more about eternal families. I´m so excited for the lesson. Also, we have a recent convert that we teach all the time named Antonio. His wife has always been kind of offish and has lost a lot of faith because of the hard times in her life. But lately she has been sitting in on the lessons and came to church yesterday! Everything is just going awesome. Elder Velasquez and I spoke in church yesterday in one of the wards and it turned out really good. I spoke about Christs life focusing on His atonement and how it is a big reason of why we do missionary work. My companion spoke about how only through Christ and baptism we can be saved. I think the members really liked it because they all came up afterwards and thanked us and asked us to come visit them this week. We have a fireside set up for this next Sunday too. President clegg is going to come speak to both the wards here about missionary work. Its going to be good for sure. Last week we had meetings in the mission home again and Elder Causse from the European Presidency came to speak to us. It was neat to hear the experiences he had and all the advice he gave us to improve. The misson is really excited right now. I´m loving the mission right now. I´m loving all that i´m learning and being able to see the Lords hand in my life. Thank you all for your support and love. I couldn´t ask for better family and friends. Have a great week! I love you all. Bye bye

Happy New Year!

Yep. Happy new year! I really can´t believe it went by so fast. It really seems like just a few months ago I got to Crevillente just before the new year. Everything is a blur. I hope everybody had an amazing Christmas. It was a lot of fun talking to all of you. I was surprised that most of the little ones sound almost the same! Thanks for everything. Christmas was really good and so was last night. We actually spent Christmas eve and new years eve with the same family. They are the party family haha. They tried to get us to stay until 12 so we could eat the traditional 12 grapes with them but we told them we had to be obedient. They were bummed out about that. Well we had a mid-transfer transfer haha. My companion got called to be the branch president in a little town called Cuenca so he will be leaving me on Wednesday. It was kind of a surprise but he is just right for the job. He is almost 28 and a native spanish speaker so they will need him there. The branch president that was there is going back to his country so thats why they need him. I´ll be getting Elder Smith. He is 28 I think as well. When President Clegg called me he said "You like to hang out with the old guys don´t you?" Haha 3 of my last 4 companions have been 26 or older. I´m excited to work with him though. I know him a little bit already and he is a nice guy. I´m hoping to have a lot of success these last few months with him. We have been finding some new investigators lately so I´m excited about that. We have Patricio who is kind of a miracle story. He had been praying one morning and reading his bible asking the Lord to guide him to His house. After that he went out searching for a Christian church and nobody knew where one was. Finally he asked a street cleaner and he pointed ours out. Luckily the youth were having an activity when he got there and it was open. He walked in and listened to the youths testimonies and was impacted. We passed by the church while he was there and taught him the first lesson. It was so good. He has a big evangelical background but thats ok. He´s going to be baptized soon I´m sure. We are also teaching Javier who is 80 years old. He is really smart and loves talking with us. He is always alone and has no family to visit him so he is always wondering when we will come back. Right now he is praying to know if what we teach him is true but he says he just hasn´t gotten an answer. We have even prayed with him to make sure he is really doing it. I´m sure it will come in the future. Well family and friends I love you tons. I hope all is well back home and I hope this new year is the best you´ve had yet. God lives and this is His church. Have a great week. Love you bye