Week 74

Changes

Monday, June 13, 2011 7:35 AM

Dear family,

This past week was fairly solid. We have our one investigator, Ana, that is flying. She basically doesn`t even need us to teach her. The Lord already prepared her. It also helps that her brother is a bishop of the other ward. She`s getting baptized on June 25th. She`s super excited. I`ll be here because I`m not going anywhere, but my comp is leaving tomorrow. My new companion is unknown at the moment because I have what is called a corto plazo in Spanish. That translates more or less to short term. Basically, when the number of missionaries is odd or some other weird funky thing is happening, they get Uruguayan members (of missionary age) to be mini-missionaries for a change (or two very occasionally). Thus my new comp is some Uruguayan dude that I don´t know yet. I don`t really know what to think about that assignment. Basically I`m happy with whatever as long as I can work, but we`ll see how it all pans out. I`m optimistic. We`re still working diligently here in our area. Things are improving, but they still have a long way to go. I also found out that the kid that Elder Whitaker trained is now going to be training. That means he is a stud because I only know one other missionary who trained his 3rd change (right after being trained) and he has now been a zone leader for 7 changes. So the work is flying over there in Prosperidad.

You may recall that last week I mentioned we were going to have a conference with Elder Bradley D. Foster of the Quorum of Seventy. We did last Friday. It was really good. He`s actually a really different guy than I was expecting, but totally cool. Really funny and he shared some great things. He made a comment that I had actually made about a year ago. He said that missions are really for the missionaries because the Lord could (if he wanted to) convert people in a way that is much easier and faster, but he chooses to use missionaries. Turns out that when all is said and done the missionaries are the ones who are most blessed.

I got letter 73 this week. And yes I get Grandma`s letters at about the same rate. I`m always grateful for the news from home. I realize that I pretty much don`t know anything about life back home so any little news is good news. :)

Our weather here is terribly bizarre. It`s obviously been getting chillier (since this is the equivalent of December for us) but we have these periodic warm days. For instance, last night we went out and worked in just our white shirts and weren`t cold at all. I can`t imagine going outside in just a white shirt in December in Colorado and not turning into an icicle, but maybe my memory is failing me. So, life is good. We think part of the weather pattern may be from the volcanic eruption in Chile recently, but it was like this last year too. This country just has weird weather I think.

So Brother Burton is still the YM president then? Good stuff.

Oh yeah, we got the conference issue of the magazine this past week. I read the whole thing in 2 days. It is awesome. Conference is like Christmas for us missionaries. We`re weird. What do you expect. Elder Scott`s talk is amazing in the sense that it really isn`t a talk, but more a reminiscence time. He still manages to convey his point and now temple marriages have probably skyrocketed. So yeah. Read them and treasure them. They`ll do us good.

One of the sister missionaries serving from the ward here got back this last week from Chile. She gave her homecoming talk yesterday and spoke for only 8 minutes. I was bummed. Rest assured I`ll be speaking longer than 8 minutes when I get home (but that may mostly be because I`ll have to search my brain for all of the gospel words in English.) That`s my story. The end. And no I don`t have time to tell it again. :)

Well. I think that is the amazing fun interesting out-of-this-world news for this week. Hope you have enjoyed it. I love you all. My family is amazing. Yay! Have a great week. You`ll never again live this week in your life so make the most out of it. Giggles.

Love Always,

DJ