I Love Being A Missionary!!!

Family!!! Wow what a week…I think I always say that, but it’s true! So much happens each week, every week is jam packed with enough things to make it be a month! But we do it all in a week. So first off the call was amazing it was so good to hear your voices! I feel like it was forever since the last one in May and so much has changed, but you guys sounded as good as ever! Also just to inform you guys the branch party went amazing, they had like 21 chickens! They also had Caldo which is like chicken soup and ponche to drink…which is like a fruit punch but a real one with a whole bunch of real fruit! Papaya, coconut, pineapple, some flower pedals of who knows what, apple, pear, peach, platano, and a whole bunch more! It is good though…I like it! Oh man so this area was so much better than last year, we ate Turkey! They gave me the breast but like a pound easily!!! It was so big. I was dying but it was so good, just like at home. Christmas went amazing here! Now as far as the missionary work, it was a little slow for the holidays nobody is basically home or wants to hear, but we did have success with several people. I went on divisions with Elder Ruiz from Panama. He was just made district leader. I did a baptismal interview for them, it went really well and he asked if I could baptize him! So I baptized him Saturday. He is 26, really smart, looking to change his life around. I’ll mention that later on. But while in divisions we visited a family that had been receiving the missionaries for a long time now, We had a great lesson with a lot of questions from our part about “why are they receiving the missionaries, what do they want out of it, what do they want out of life, where do they want to end up (with God), so what do they have to do”? it went really well, a really powerful lesson. I love asking questions and then just listening trying to discern what they are really saying or wanting to say that way we can really discover their problem to help them better. I love being a missionary!!! Um what else…I’m taking more photos.

I lost my adapter so now I can’t send photos…um so how is your reading in the book of Mormon going? Dad? Mom? Dad? Mom? So in church we watched 17 miracles (we are in a branch and they do whatever they want). I love that movie. It is sad but it reminded me of the sacrifice that the pioneers made for us to cross the plains under harsh conditions. I am so grateful for everything that they did for us. It is amazing the faith that they had. It blows me away and I ask myself what would I do in their position? I would like to think I would follow the prophet and go, and have the faith that they had to perform miracles, because they had solid faith and depended on the Lord for basically everything. But sometimes I feel that because we are so blessed in this day with technology that we aren’t as dependent on God as they are, therefore our faith is a little lower naturally. That’s something I am going to work on this week is being more dependent on the Lord for everything. It also goes along with humility. It is to have a balance, being humble enough to ask and be dependent but also not to the point where with every little thing we are going to the Lord in the middle. Before I forget, the baptism went well; I love baptisms for how strong they feel the spirit. It basically just confirms that everything they were taught and all the changes they did were correct! I love it! I love being out here. I love being a missionary! We spoke in church today with about a 4 minute warning! But I had a talk already written for such circumstances, so it was bad! About missionary work (obvie) we are going to try to get the members involved more in the missionary work here. We shall see how it goes! They seemed pretty stoked so should go great. Well I love you all!!!