May 23, 2011

Hola familia,
Sounds like everyone had a good week. Hopefully everyone stops getting sick all the time, and that the visit down to Holden goes well. I miss Holden and the farm, it´s been a long time.

Me and Elder Jardine are staying together here in the Plata. We had a pretty good week. When I went to the meetings Thursday and Friday, I went with another district leader, and Elder Jardine stayed in our area with a member, and they had some really good lessons. They were able to take out baptismal dates with the aunt and uncle of Keiko and Salma, so that was really good. From Tuesday to Saturday I wasn´t in my area a whole lot. I went and did interchanges in another area in my district, and we were able to help one of their investigators get over her doubts and we committed her to baptism for the 4th of June. It was a really good intercambio, I think we both learned a lot.

Monday we were finally able to find Maria Luz in the house of Marta, and she had already read a couple of chapters from the Book of Mormon, and had prayed and asked to know that it is true. We had a really good lesson with her and Marta and were able to commit her to baptism on the 4th of June and she´s really excited. On Sunday, Marta was sick, and ended up not waking up to go to church, but Maria Luz came alone with another member that lives close to her. She saw that they were leaving, and ran out and asked them if she could go with them, so she made it to church, even without her aunt! María Luz is progressing a lot so we´re really excited, and we hope that Guillermo and Blanca, the aunt and uncle of Keiko can really progress also.

This week when my companion taught Salma and Keiko, they still weren´t progressing a whole lot. They didn´t come to church on Sunday, but when we got to their house on Sunday night we had a run in with the stubborn Catholic grandmother. She was upset because her granddaughters are doing a mockery to God because they are already baptized in the Catholic church, and she said that Fiorrella, the mom, was forcing them to be baptized in our church. We had a good talk with her and she calmed down, and listened a little, but not a whole lot. We had Hrmno. Chalupa with us. He helped quite a bit also, but in the end Keiko said that she doesn´t want to listen anymore, and she sided with her grandmother. She said that she was just listening because her mother didn´t give her a choice, but it felt like the grandmother really had confused them quite a bit. We listened and bore testimony with patience, and hopefully in the near future they can really show self initiative to know for themselves if these things are true, but the Grandma´s influence is not helping at all. So we lost some definite momentum with Keko and Salma, but we found Guillermo and Blanca, and my companion said that they were really excited and are already reading and praying and have lots of desires to change and prepare for baptism.

It´s often very hard when the things go down like they went down with Keiko and Salma, but I know that maybe it´s still not their time, and that there´s others to find. The area is still growing little by little, but we really need to find complete families to teach and to accept the gospel in their lives. This ward has almost no families, with 2 parents and kids that are members and attend church. So we´ll be praying and searching this week, and we hope to have a couple more miracles in La Plata, but I know we have already seen many.

Well I hope everything goes well this week, and we´ll communicate next week.
Love, David