Six Months

We went to the temple with some of our investigators this week. They felt the Spirit so it was good. Yesterday we had 3 of the 4 people interviewed and they passed to be baptized. So we're planning on having our 4th one tomorrow. What else... For Thanksgiving we're going to do nothing. I'm going to play in some Turkeybowls and we might go to some houses for dinner if we get invited. Tonight we're going to a members home for Pie Night. They make a lot of pies the night before and eat them because they're to full to eat after Thanksgiving. So it should be fun. I can't really think of much that's gone on this week. We're tr;ying to go to Temple Square for Friday night. So that we can go to the first night of the lights. It seems like we do the same thing everyday. Teach, eat and you know. Well I bought "Joseph: A Nashville Tribute to Joseph Smith." So I'm excited to listen to that. I'm getting ready for transfers on the 2nd. I've already been out for 6 months. CRAZY.

Snow

Things here are pretty much the same. We're planning to have a baptism in a few weeks. On the 28th. We for sure have 3 people being baptized that day, and we're planning on adding another 1 or 2. So it should be a good day when it comes. I can't really think of much to update y'all on. Nothing too much has changed.

Man it's cold. Probably a lot warmer in Houston than here. We had a big snow storm on Saturday and that was not fun to walk in. But anyways... the Spanish is coming along pretty well. I can't wait till I don't have to try at it though. Some day. We have dinner with the Americans on Mondays and Tuesdays so it's pretty fun. I can actually communicate well with them so it's a nice change. I can't really think of anything that I can say or any stories. But next week I'll have more to write about. Or When things happen I'll write them down so I don't forget them since I can't think of them right now. Well this Friday we have interviews with the mission president. Yup.

Enjoy the pictures...Well the first picture is from Saturday. We walked from 6000 West to 7400 west. It was a very long and cold walk. Which leads to picture number 2. I think I'm going to buy one of these hats so I don't die in the winter. They're from a stake multi-cultural activity we had. The guy served his mission in Russia so we tried on some of his hats. And the third picture is just us messing around.

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.