21 Day Promise

Well things here are going pretty well. Like I said the spanish is getting easier. I still have to focus while listening to it, but I can understand a lot. We have some pretty solid investigators right now. The one that has been coming for like a month, who I think I mentioned last time, we put her on date for the 21st along with her daughter and son. And then we have another family that is living with her cousin or uncle who attends the English ward. We put her daughter and son and her on date for the 28th. So we're hoping to have some baptisms coming up pretty soon. There's potential for 6 or 7 baptisms. Then another one of our investigators, Alejandro, recognizes the blessings of the priesthood and that come from us teaching him. But he hasn't accepted a baptismal date. So last night I committed him to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. Once he does this we'll be able to get him on date. I'm pretty excited about that. We had 9 people at church last week, and taught 24 lessons. I'm trying to push and get 30 lessons in a week.

I'm trying the 21 day promise out too. Elder M. Russel Ballard and Robert E. Wells gave to all the people living inside of the boundaries of the Salt Lake City mission. You make a list of your friends or family that are less active or non-members. And after you make that list you pray for them every morning and everynight for 21 days straight. And they promised that at least one person on the list would accept missionaries into their house and take the lessons. So I'm excited to see how that works.

Well the next transfers are on December 2nd. I'm kind of worried about Thanksgiving. Because I don't want to get fat. So we'll have to see how I do with that. Oh and we went to the High Councilmans house for lunch on Sunday and watched "An Unlikely Mormon." It's Glen Beck's conversion story. Y'all should probably watch it. It's pretty good.

Time Is Flying By

The time is going by really fast. I already almost have 6 months in the mission. It doesn't seem like it's been that long. My Spanish is improving a lot. I can understand most of what is being said. And I'm still working on speaking. But it's getting easier. So I'm excited for that. I'm doing pretty good. I don't know I'm still me. But man, this weekend we had a baptism of this lady. She was so prepared from the first visit. We left her at church because we thought she left, but she just went to change her baby. She still came again the next week. I probably told y'all that before. But I could have performed my first baptism, but I figured it would be better for someone in the ward to do it. We change every 6 weeks but the ward members stay and they'll be the ones that keep them active.

There's another investigator that we added last night. She's been coming to church for the past 3 weeks, but we've never been able to get her address. We finally got it on Sunday and visited her yesterday. We're planning on committing her to be baptized on the 14th. She seems like a golden investigator too. We're still working on the family of 6. We had a Zone Conference on Thursday and it was so good. The Spirit was so strong during the whole time. The ward that did the lunch for us did an amazing job. They had some pumpkins carved and lit up (see below). But anyways after lunch we always sing to the people who prepared the lunch. And the Spirit continued during this. We sang "Armies of Helaman" and I had to hold back the tears. All the ladies we're crying and even the Stake/Branch President was tearing up. He was a big polynesian guy. He shared us a story about his nephew who is one of the top ranked high school football players. But after we sang that we sang "Called to Serve."

For Halloween we couldn't really go out at night so we had a Zone activity and had a chance to watch the movie. I told everyone we should watch the Hannah Montanna Movie. Pretty much all of them were making fun of me and saying that it would be a stupid movie. But 2 or 3 said they would and they rented and brought it to the activity. During the movie everyone was into it and liked it by the end. So it was funny. I think that's about all that's going on with me.

Halloween

There's not too much to update on right now. We're still working with the same people. There hasn't really been any real big changes. We're still going to have a baptism this Saturday. Umm me and Elder Gudino are still getting along alright. We were talking with an Apostolic pastor assistant and he asked us if we celebrate halloween. So I said yes and he started playing a CD about the "origin of Halloween." And it talked about how it is to celebrate the first lie told on earth by satan. It was pretty weird and full of a bunch of non scriptural stuff. I think I'm going to get a copy of it.

Today we went to Kohls and they had a Texas sweatshirt for $25 and I bought some sweats. Because I didn't really have any cold stuff. Only basketball shorts and a pair of jeans, and one long sleeve shirt. We had the first snow storm of the season yesterday which wasn't really too fun. I think that's about all that's really going on.

I think that we should be able to baptize every week this month. Hopefully we can. We have a lot of good investigators in one stake. But the other one is kind of dead. The members don't really help us out at all, and so we don't have any investigators. The work in this area is mostly with the help of members, because tracting doesn't work out too well here. That's why we have so much success is because we have a lot of member support. I can't really think of any experiences that I've had this week that really stand out. I'll try to think of one. Last Sunday we were at the library trying to get some books because we had to teach the Gospel Principles class. And the librarian is a white lady that isn't very nice. So Elder Gudino asked if we could take all the Spanish Book of Mormons and Bibles because she only gave us 3 gospel principle manuels. And when he asked she said "HELL NO!" So we were surprised at that and now we joke around about saying that when people ask us questions. It's pretty funny when it has the mexican accent. Well that's about it for now and I hope y'all have a happy halloween!

PBJs Aren't Good Enough

My spanish is getting better. I've realized that I shouldn't worry about mistakes. Because as I worry about that, I speak less. And the less I speak, the less opportunites I have to improve. Well the work here is going good. We should be having a baptism on Monday, and then another one on the 24th. Which is after the transfer, so it might not count for us if we change places, but it's another soul helped. I had a few good experiences this past week. The first one was with some older members of the church. We went over to their house because we didn't have a dinner for that night, and Elder Gudino said he knew some Samoans who would have some food. So we went over to their house to see if we could just make some sandwichs or if they had any left over food. But she said that she didn't cook any food that day, so we asked if we could just make peanut butter and jelly sandwichs. But she wouldn't let us make sandwichs because she said "it's not good enough for you." Everytime we tried she just kept saying that. It made me start thinking about how I need to live up to that respect that she has for us, and that other members have for us. It's not really for myself why I should do the best I can, but so that I can be worthy of the members. The good members at least. It's tough in Utah. We'll be talking to people about the church and then they'll tell us "I work with someone that's a member..." or "I know some members..." and then they go on to tell us about some members that aren't doing what they're supposed to. There's a lot of problems with that here in Utah... It makes the work a little tougher. Everybody notices everything we do as members of the Church so we need to always be a good example. On another note, we were talking to the Samoan family and they were talking about all the help and donations have been received to send to Samoa, Tonga, and the Phillipines. It's good to know that people are still living their religion and helping others in this tough time. Not only in the Islands, but with the economy here too. Then the other day we were walking on the street to an appointment and we saw somebody walking towards us. He wasn't really walking straight. So we figured he was drunk. And we decided to try to talk to him anyways, if he wasn't too drunk. So as we got closer we started talking to him. As we talked to him we found out he was homeless, and by looking at his lips it looked like he was on crack. He had white stuff on his lips. But I started talking and testifying to him. I talked about how he is a son of God, and that he really does care about him. As I was talking he began to cry and say "I can't be forgiven" and "Jesus can't help me now." So I started talking about the Atonement. We gave him our number, and a copy of the Book of Mormon. We haven't seen him since. But hopefully he'll read it and know these things are true and change his life. Well I think that's about all that is really new. At least that I can think of. I've been thinking a lot about how I was before the mission lately though. And I'm ashamed of how I was. I was so selfish, and thought about my self most of the time. And I know that I probably still am, and I have a long way to go until I can be where I want to be. But I'm changing and trying to get away from what I was before the mission.The experiences I've had so far on the mission have helped me realize these things. And I hope I can learn to focus less on myself and more on others. Well I think that's about all for now.

Great Conference, Great Week

We went back to the house that we visited that one night last week, and have taught the lady living there 2 more lessons. We committed her to be baptized on the 24th and she accepted. So we should be able to get her and at least one of her 2 sons baptized. But that will be after the end of the transfer. She's a pretty golden investigator. The family of 6 we had a lesson with last Thursday that went pretty well. They still seem pretty interested. We went by last night with the Daily Dose missionaries to give an English lesson. We go back tomorrow to teach them again. We have another 2 investigators in the same ward. His name is Alejandro, and we're teaching his wife too. They both are pretty solid investigators and we're planning on committing them next time we teach them. So, in that ward we have a lot of people we're teaching right now, that seem pretty good for baptism. Then in the other ward we're working in, we don't have that many people we're teaching. But we're going to the temple tonight with one of our investigators in that ward. He's 12 and plays a lot of soccer. We've been trying to get him baptized, and he finally said that he might get baptized in a week or two. That's about it for the investigators we have so far. But the work is going pretty well right now.

General Conference this weekend was pretty amazing. A lot of the talks focused on helping others. With the way the economy is right now it's tough on everybody. But what I got from conference is that we need to treat others good even though the times are tough. I always like listening to Jeffrey R. Holland and his talks. His one Sunday morning was good about the Book of Mormon. We had pretty good seats for most of the sessions. I know that they really are Apostles and Prophets.

Helping Out in the Temple

Well, I don't really have much time, and not too much to update y'all on. On Monday we went to the Temple to do some service. We got to go up to the 5th floor where the Solemn Assembly room is. We set up for a devotional the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12 and Quorum of the 70 are going to have before General Conference. We set up the chairs for them and put their hymn books on the chairs. I got to look through all the 1st presidency and quorum of the 12 hymn books. They have their names on them. And I sat in the First Presidency's chairs in that room. So that was pretty neat. During the set up we got to go down to the 4th floor. That is the General Authority floor. I got to go into the room where the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12 receive revelations. The guy told us a story that when Gordon B. Hinckley was called to be the prophet he stood in front of each picture of the prophets that are on the wall in that room until he received a confirmation. Then I got to go into the most senior Apostles' changing room. There were 4 lockers for the most senior Apostles, and I took a 130 year old table out of this room to the solemn assembly room. We also got to go into the Quorum of the 70's changing room. In this room is the top of the Holy of Holies. So we got to see the dome of it. So that was a pretty good experience I had in the mission.

Later that night I got a reminder of the reality of the work. As we were going to one of our referrels houses, we were talking about the Virgin of Guadalupe, because they have a big figurine of her inside the house and out on their yard. We talked to the person once and they work with someone that's a member and she wanted to know more so had the member refer her. So as we approached the house, it was really dark. All the lights were off, and it was night time, but it looked darker than houses usually look at night. But the car was there so we decided to go try anyway. As we approached the drive way, I started feeling a little bit weird. But we kept going. Then as we passed through the fence the feeling intensified. Then as we stood in front of the door, it was the strongest feeling I've ever had that we needed to leave. As it was increasing Elder Gudino rang the door bell, and immediately after we pretty much ran off the property. It was as if there was an actual being there. After Elder Gudino rang the doorbell his arm went numb and he didn't have much feeling in it. He told me he had the same feeling too. As we crossed the street we felt like someone was watching us/ following us from the house. When we looked back there was nobody there. It was like what Joseph Smith said when it was an actual being from the unseen world. But it was nowhere near what he went through. So we talked to someone on the street then returned to the house. As we were planning, my head started bleeding and Elder Gudino asked me about it. So I went to the bathroom to get a tissue to clean it up. As I was in the bathroom, Elder Gudino felt something walk from in front of him to the side of him. He said he heard footsteps too. But something definetly wasn't right. We both felt weird, and like something was weighing us down. So we called the ZL's and they came over and we had a prayer, and during the prayer it immediately got better. It made me realize that the adversary is real and that he hates me right now. And that he is going to try and do everything he can to stop me. Everything is good now and I think that experience made me better. Well that's all the things I can really think of that happened this week.

I Had A Dream

Well, this week has been pretty good. We had Zone Conference on Friday. So that was pretty fun. President Sonne said that he was trying to figure out how we could have more success in our mission and he had the idea of a perfect month. So in the month of October, we're going to be as perfect/ close to perfection that we can get. So it should be a pretty good month next month. If missionaries are an army, this mission is like the Green Beret's. It's a whole different level. Most missions are "Preach My Gospel" missions, and we moved past that to a "Zion Mission." It's pretty intense here. If we aren't baptizing we aren't doing our job. Then on Sunday we had Stake Conference in one of the stakes we covered. And that one was good too. One of the temple presidents spoke there. And he made the comment that the Sacrament table is the only altar of the church, outside of the temple. Which I never really thought about it that way before.

Let's see... this Saturday we had 2 baptisms. So now I'm sitting at 7 baptisms for the mission. Which is almost 1 a week. BUT.. I had a good experience this week. Saturday night, I had a dream that we were going to teach and baptize a family of 6. So I thought that it was just me desiring it, but on Monday we got a referrel for a person named "Ilda Orozco." And it was a referrel for a Spanish Book of Mormon and was referred by herself at a Temple Square visit. And in the description it said "family of 6 that wants to know more about the Book of Mormon, Prophets, Temples, and the Church." So we went on exchanges yesterday and we contacted them. And when we got there we were talking and I told about Joseph Smith and the first vision. The Spirit was so strong and testifying. So I asked how they felt and they all said "weird" or "different" and I explained that that was the Spirit testifying. So a little later on we asked how long they have in Utah and what brought them to Utah. They said they have lived here for a year and the mom responded with something like this as to why, "I had a dream a few years ago about this valley. I remember seeing every part of it and thinking that it was a beautiful and important place. And that I needed to go there, or someone from my family. I didn't know if it would be me or my husband, but I know someone would come here." And so the missionary I was on exchanges with said that God has a reason for bringing them here and that this is probably it. And so I left them a Book of Mormon and a chapter to read from it and asked when I could come back. And the mom said that next Thursday would work because she wants to read the Book of Mormon and have the whole family there (her husband was working/asleep. I'm not really sure. One of those 2). But they seem like a real solid family, and I see them getting baptized. And I don't know the dream may sound crazy that I had, but it got me to look out for a family of 6. I think that's about all that really happened for this week that I can think of.