Family!
Greetings from icy
Ohio! It gets really icy here! They actually canceled the English
ward this week because there was just too much ice in the parking lot for them
to take care of. Crazy! But they didn't cancel our meetings...
I'll get to that in a bit...
Well, if you will
remember, a while back we had transfers, and I completely forgot to mention who
the new Elder was that replaced Elder Garcia. It was..... Elder
Bradford!! He was in my MTC district, and it is super cool to be working
with him again. We have all these awesome MTC inside jokes, and it's kind
of funny to speak Spanish with him and think back 6 months ago to how our Spanish
was back then. The Lord has definitely been helping both of us!
Anyways, I tell you all this because I got to go on exchanges with Elder
Bradford this past week. Not too much exciting happened, just a lot of
trying people and finding them not at home. We did have a lesson with an
investigator who started off the lesson like this: "So I started reading
that book you left me last time, and I'm a little confused about these gold
plates..." YES!! He actually read out of the Book of
Mormon! That was exciting for us. We also had a great lesson with a
guy, during which he explained to us all of the intricacies of crossing the
border into the U.S. The things people go through to get here blew my
mind!
We've recently been
starting to have success in re-contacting former investigators from the area
book. I wanted to tell you one story real quick about one that we contacted
this week. We were cleaning out a corner of our study room, and for some
reason or another, we found a stack of teaching records that weren't in the
area book. So I split them up by area, then gave the ones that fell in
the other Elder's area to them. A few days later we get a call from Elder
Taylor. He said the night before he was looking through the records, and
he saw one named J---- H------. The next morning, he ended up sitting
next to a lady who spoke Spanish on the bus. He asked her what her name
was, and she said "J----." and before she could say her last name, he
said "H------". That ended up being her last name, and she was
a little spooked out by that... =) But anyways, turns out she was
in our area and I had just been mixed up, so he gave us back the record and we
went to go visit her the other night. I thought that was a great example
of how the Lord knows his children, and he has small things happen; like us
cleaning out that part of the study room or me mixing up where this lady lived,
just to get us in touch with people again.
This weekend we had
some amazing opportunities to hear from some general authorities! We had
an amazing zone conference on Saturday with Elder Perkins of the
first quorum of the seventy. He taught us a lot, and I was able to learn
so much from him and from the Spirit that was there. That night, we were
allowed to attend the adult session of stake conference in our area.
Elder Smith of the seventy was there, as well as Elder D. Todd Cristofferson!
We were standing at the door talking to some other missionaries before the
meeting started, and all of a sudden, there was Elder Cristofferson! He
shook our hands as he walked into the meeting. Two apostles down, 10 to
go! Anyways, we got to hear from him that night, as well as the next
morning for the general session of stake conference. That was a great
experience.
D----- has accepted
all of the commandments we have taught him, but he still has a few doubts about
the restoration, so that is what we are working on with him. The
baptismal date is still for this Saturday, and as of right now, that's
still the plan. After tonight we'll know more for sure what will happen.
Two other quick
things. You may remember that I ate some super hot salsa a few months ago
at a member's house. Well, they got a new kind, and I tried it this
week. It was called "Black Mamba Salsa: A Venomous Hot
Sauce." I believe that was a great description. It was
insane! Definitely the hottest thing I have ever eaten... Also, I
had a lady lecture me for about 10 minutes on Mexican herbal cures. That
was a pretty interesting conversation...
Well, that's it for
this week! Thanks for everything. Have a great week!
Love,