March 21, 2011 E-Mail

It was another great week here in Mattawa. It just went by way to fast. It seems just like yesterday that I was here writing an e-mail. To answer a few of your questions, Dad asked if I work in Royal City and where we shop at here. Royal City has it's own companionship but it is part of the district. So my district only has four missionaries in it, me and my companion, then the companionship in Royal. So I will get to go there on exchanges but it's not my area. My area covers Mattawa, Desert Aire, Beverly and Shawana. They are all very small places though. But it's been good. It was nice to have day light savings because that makes it easier for missionaries to work at night. So that has been a good change. It's hard waking up in the morning when it's still dark, but it's nice having the light a lot later.  You said that they are going to close the Ogden Temple soon. Are they just remodeling the inside or is it going to be completely different on the outside too? Have they started on Brigham City yet?


This week we had sort of a miracle find. Late one night we went to try and see a kid who had been taught in the past named Edgar. Well he wasn't there, but another kid answered the door so we asked him if we could come in. He let us in and we were talking to him and his Mom. There names are Raul and Juana. Well anyways, when we first meet someone we usually always try to find out there relationship with God and there beliefs that they have. So we were sort of talking about prophets and I asked them if they new what a prophet was. The kid replied yes, and then answered "Joseph Smith." It pretty much just caught us off guard because a good majority of the people don't even know what a prophet is and this kid was exactly right! Well it turns out that they had been taught a little bit in the past too, and the kid had been left with some sort of a pamphlet and had read through it a lot. So then we asked them if they believed it all and they said yes. So we invited them to be baptized and they said yes. So that's the miracle of the week. Now we just have to make sure they stay on date. It's hard with the spanish people because a lot of times they just tell us what we want to here. But then they are never willing to come to church or anything. So we will keep praying for them and working with them to hopefully get them baptized soon.

Friday night we had a branch activity and a lot of people came. Most of them were members, but quite a few none members came too. So I started talking to everyone and there was this one guy who comes to church every Sunday but he's not a member. He believes everything and really wants to be baptized but he can't be because of a marriage situation. So we are going to start working with him too. Hopefully we can get something worked out so he can get married. So along with that branch activity and just people in general, I think I ate authentic mexican food like 4 nights this week. That's pretty good!

Friday the branch President called me and asked if I would be willing to talk in church on Sunday. So I agreed. Then he told me for like 15-20 minutes. Well I'm horrible at speaking in english let alone in spanish. But I told him I would. So I pretty much only had Saturday to prepare. And he didn't give me a topic either. He just said one of the missionary lessons. So I ended up talking about the restoration. It actually went pretty well. I thought it was only going to be about 10 minutes long, but it went about 20.

I don't know if you remember me talking about the Farias family from East Wenatchee. Well Elder Garcia my last companion called me the other day and told me that Hermana Farias was in the ICU and they were going to have to pull the plug. I'm not really sure what happened. But when I first got to the area they weren't active at all. By the time I left they were pretty much going every week. We were able to teach them a lot, and a lot about the plan of salvation. I hope it was something that comforted her as she passed away. I remember teaching it to her and then her telling us that she wasn't scared to die. It just sort of made me sad to know that she had died.

I think that's it for this week! I finished up Doctrine and Covenants this last week. It was really making me think about Joseph Smith and all that he did. There is no way someone would go through as much as he did for something that wasn't true. We all need to follow his example and show that much faith in our beliefs. I know that through him we have the true church and we have the priesthood authority here again. I'm so grateful for the gospel and all the many blessings I have received through it.

I hope you all have a great week!!! I love you!!!!