March 30, 2009

The work is going great here. Just to hopefully answer as many questions as i can, we live in a pretty nice apartment, with two other Elders both from Utah. one of them was in the MTC with Jordan Unga and knew him real well. The other one knew Nate cook, Travis cooks older brother. My comp is from Boise idaho, and just finished a year in the mission last week. We go to a english ward with the english elders we live with, but what is cool is that either me or my companion have to wear a headset and translate the whole meeting from english into spanish which gets sent to these different headsets that the hispanics pick up when they walk in so that they can understand the meeting as well. Its cool, but its rough cause you gotta be thinking fast and using vocab real quick. haha My spanish is doing okay, its cool to see things that the stake president said in my blessing already come to pass, like with the language, and also with being able to give blessings, we went and gave ablessing to a member last night and it was really powerful. Then i had a prompting to share our testimonies with them cause they could not attend church that day, so we did and there was an amazing spirit there. It was great, that is one thing i have learned already really quick is that bearing testimony really converts and helps touch hearts and brings people to want to change. Its been cool getting to see the differences in the missions, but its good, that it is different, it is harder to find people, and we dont get as many lessons or contacts, but we really make them count when we do. We have had some great experiences already, we were once teaching these two guys named Andres and Roberto, and at first they didnt seem too interested, but as we taught the spirit got stronger and you could see there hearts change, and soften, as they wanted to learn more it was amazing. Also we had a family come to church yesterday that has two little girls, and it was great they loved the whole thing and told us after church they are already excited to come next week. There little daughters are so cute and love to play with us, they loved primary and when they came the parents didnt want to go into the chapel, cause thet thought there daughters would run around too much, but luckily we had a sister in the ward who couyld speak spanish and invited them in and said that i would watch the girls out in the lobby while they were in the chapel, so i played cars with them. haha They were so cute, and it was great we went over after church to see how they liked it, and we said a prayer with them, and it was great to see them as a family folding there arms and praying together, its like in the talk i gave before i left, like president eyering said, you could see the family becoming more united in heart as they prayed together and talked with there father in heaven. I loved it. Also yesterday after church we were contacting and we found this young man, who when we were teaching him asked about "el libro de formon" and i said oh you mean "el libro de Mormon" and turns out he had one! his cousin who had just recently been baptized gave it to him, and talked to him about it! and he was so excited to see us cause he wanted to know more. Before we really got deep into the lesson, he was like, where is your church?? i wanna come! we have already been having some great experiences and being blessed by the Savior. I cant even list them all. Its great i know the lord was preparing me for this and strengthening my testimony just so i could share it with others here. Also the people here and the ward is awesome! they are so friendly! there accents are sweet. But i love how kind they are just like Heather told me they were. Its beautiful here too. We have had at least every day a little bit of rain, so that has been nice. But i love it here everything is going well. Everything is going great. Im so grateful for my Savior and his sacrifice so that we can experience joy, and happiness. I love being able to put his name on my chest each day again. Being his representive is the best opportunity i could ever ask for. Oh i have a good scripture i like. Its Acts 5;41-42, its good it talks about baring shame for the saviors name. I would do anything for him cause he gave everything for us. I love this church and know with all my heart its true, and know that the lord will always be by our sides. Oh yeah and we drive a car haha and have acell phone for each companionship, so that is a big change as well. But its nice, haha the members feed us every once in a while but usually we cook, but the members really love the missionaries here. Very nice to us. But i think that is all i can think of right now.