Monday, March 8 2010

Hey Family! Well this week, like all weeks flew by! And like all weeks its had its ups and downs, i never thought that home would be a weakness if you understand me, its really hard to work when i miss my family so much! But dont worry im being taken care of! My Zone loves me and they are helping me in all of my challenges, but even more than they the Lord has been with me so much this week! I am learning the calling of a missionary is more of a privelage than ever before!
Well this week Ramon the shirtless found himself some nice white pants and a nice clean white shirt and he got it all wet in the baptismal font! Which means hes now baptised! Man it was an awesome experience, but before this my companion and i needed to get it all set up, which was a wreck! haha the baptismal font was filled from the previous elders baptism and the pump wasnt working and the font was really dirty, but somehow in a half hour we got it all cleaned and filled up, and luckily, or more like miraculously we had just enough water for the baptism, because the water cuts out here and we can go without water for hours or days! And alot of other things were going wrong but minutes before the baptism everything fell perfectly into place and we had a very awesome baptism, haha when he was in the font he was really scared of the water and the bishop had to force him under, but it really was a spiritual experience and you can see the change in his eyes.
We have another baptism this saturday and so im exicited to see this next one, this week we have two families we are working really hard with, the Montero family, which is a grandma, and through her we are teaching all of her daughters and sons so we have alot of potential baptisms, two of which i am sure will be baptised, but when is the real question. And the other family is the Gomez family, and the mom knows the gospel is true and the daughter is in love with the young womens program and she is reading and praying and believes its true, but the dad is so stubburn haha, he even told us he is rebelious and that when he wants to he will change, we know his weakness is his children so hopefully through patience and perserverance he will come about, oh and one other couple, the Sanders, they had a fight this weekend so we only ended up teaching the girl but she really loved what we taught her and you can see the change that the spirit brings to people.
Yesterday was stake conference and we came with a member who lived in arizona and loved his mission here so much that he moved back here, so its always fun to visit with him about things we had back in the states, like pegs on bikes and all you can drink fountain drinks at taco bell and stuff. But anyways the conference at the stake center was packed! And all of the missonaries in the stake, all 32 of us were lined up on the wall, 16 on one and 16 on the other, and we stood for two hours, but what a spiritual experiance! Since we were standing everyone could see us and almost every talk ended up talking about missionary work, our president was there and he talked about our sacrifice and everything that missionaries do in a comical way, but it really hit me how important and how special my calling is, that as i stood on the side looking at all of my "comrades", my companions, that we were really the warriors of the stake, to me haha, that through us we bring the lost into the protection of the fold, and as i looked into the fold i could see the recent converts of mine, and of the other elders and the happiness they had, and the love i had for them, and i realized that i had been sinning for the past two months with wanting this time here to go by so fast so i can return home, and for the first time i think i really understood what a calling is, and the trust that Jesus Christ has in me, today we had a bbq for three of my friends who are leaving for home, and we had a testimony meeting with them, and they shared their experiences and testimonies, and i can tell you that the spirit is extremely strong when someone is giving a final testimony so to speak, that ive never felt so unworthy to be in such great company as the heros who i get to work side by side, and i realized how much i need to work at being the best i can be! Anyways i got to go but know that i love you all and i miss you so much! Know im going to give it my all this week and i love you so much!! Keep up the good life and ill talk to you after my battle with satan this week!