86: Primavera 5

A Sweet Week

 

Hello Family!

¡Feliz Días!  These three weeks are the feliz días, because we're in a trio with Elder Feliz right now.  More about that to come.

Let's start with Friday last week.  After writing, we went and made mole in a member's house.  I LOVE HAVING A MEXICAN COMPANION.  He cooks so well.  So we went and ate in the house of the family E.  They're actually a family in Trebol, but we're friends.  It was someone's birthday...I don't really know her name...but after cooking and eating mole, they had a cake to eat as well.  So that was a very good, relaxing P-day.  In other news, they're going to have a Cinemark in Santa Ana finally.  This city's growing up...

We also have been doing a lot of service in the area.  Friday we cleaned up a house of some recent converts/inactives.  We returned Saturday morning to finish the job...Puchica it looked so much better.  The week before we went and cut all the grass and weeds in front of the house of a member.  And we did that with pure hoes and machetes.  It looked a lot better, but apparently we accidentally cut down their chili bush and a lemon tree.  I'm not really sure about that...but it's possible.  There were so many freaking plants there.

So the zone had 18 people baptized, and 0 dates for this month.  So I went to Trebol and helped them put 2 more dates with this sweet family.  That was a hard lesson, but really cool because we got them to commit.  They're going to get baptized today in the afternoon.  I'm stoked.  This is the first time the zone had baptized 20 in one month in almost 2 years.  I'm STOKED.

Sunday was sweet.  We had a ton of people in church, only 5 of them we counted as investigators, but it was really cool.  Three of them have dates for September 9th: N, O, and M.  N is a little girl who has always been going to church.  I don't really like teaching kids, but her mom wants her to get baptized, and she can't go because of work.  We've been teaching M for a while now.  I'm excited that he's finally accepted a baptismal date.  Then there's O.  Man, this guy is awesome.  He's a youth of 17 years old.  Two years ago, he was taught by the missionaries and received an answer that these things were true.  He wanted to get baptized, but his parents didn't let them; his dad was a pastor in another church.  So they burned his Book of Mormon, hymnbook, everything he had from our church, and prohibited him from talking with the missionaries.  And who taught him?  Elder Brown, my first zone leader when I was starting the mission.  Well, a couple days ago, his mom called him and told him that she wanted him to get baptized.  His parents were away living in other parts of the country...so they told him to get baptized.  It's awesome.  He has such a powerful testimony and is more active than most the members.  It's a miracle.

Sunday we also introduced a mission plan for the month of September: NUNCA VOY SOLO (Don't Go Alone).  We're doing it as a stake this time, and we've planned a lot for it.  The ward got pretty pumped, and has been working with us this whole week.  We've had lessons with members for three days straight: not one lesson without a member present.  Way cool.  Also, we've been able to do a lot of divisions because we have Elder Feliz with us.  Later that day, we had a meeting with the ward and stake mission leaders of our stake and introduced this plan to them too.  They are all pretty pumped.

Monday was interesting.  We had interchanges.  Elder Rodriguez went to Palmar 2, and Elder Lopez came here.  Elder Feliz is with us until the end of this change, and then he goes home, finishing his mission.  He's crazy, and a lot of fun.  These last weeks have definitely been a lot of fun. Jaja...

Wednesday, we had zone meeting.  It was good.  Everyone pretty stoked for NUNCA VOY SOLO.  Also, it was Elder Malmgren's birthday, the assistant.  So we got him a cake and baked chocolate chip cookies.  They were good, but not the same.  That and buttermilk pancakes are the foods I think I miss most...seriously.  There's just nothing close to that.

On Thursday we did a huge cleaning job in our house.  It looks really good.

So it's been really good.  We're going to end with 20 baptisms, meeting our goal, and we're starting September out with 12 dates, which is sweet.

Seriously, we've been working like crazy this week and have had a ton of fun and great results.  It's a lot of fun with Elder Feliz.  I hope everything is well back home.

Take care and feliz día,

Elder Bailey