E-mail #2 - December 3rd

Hey family,

Well, I am back and going to write a few more things, mainly about the work, but I will try to answer all your questions as well.

So really I don’t know what it is with our luck, but we have been finding a lot of people this transfer and then nothing much happens with them. So we have found a lot and taken out a lot. They say in order to baptize double you have to find double and I guess that is true, but it is tough to make ourselves do contacts in the heat. Last week was really hot and frustrating. We set citas all week long and everyone dodged us and so we didn’t have many sit down citas. We walked quite a bit though. For some reason it got a lot colder now for about a week (today is especially nice) and it has been a bit more bearable. I hate heat. But I think I can put up with it a lot easier now.

Anyways, we do have several great investigators. One is Juan Carlos Farías. We brought Juan Carlos Ruiz Diaz with us to teach the first charla over again and it was amazing! I asked our member if he would explain the history of Joseph Smith and he did a killer job! If only all the members were like that! He has only been a member for one and a half years, but he is a stud! He is Elders Quorum President as well and really tries to magnify his calling. We need more converts like that. Anyways, Juan Carlos Farías is really liking the teachings and understood the Restoration perfectly and is going to pray about it now as well. Still hasn’t come to church but I hope that he does this week. Unfortunately his wife is still waiting for the baby and it is late so they may go in and take it out surgically. So we may need to have patience is all.

We are also teaching another woman named Gigliola (italian name) Alegre. Her sister Mabel also listens when she has time, but their husbands don’t really have much interest. Everyone listened before like 6 years back, but for some reason never received the Book of Mormon even though they took the charlas for like 6 months. Hard to believe, but something didn’t happen that needed to happen. So now we gave them the Book of Mormon and Gigliola is reading like mad and had lots of questions at first but now is answering a lot of her own. She says she thinks the Book of Mormon is true and wants to come to church as soon as she can. Her sister Mabel has doubts, but I don’t think she has really read the Book of Mormon apart from a glance. She talked about how it isn’t agreeable with the Bible and the Bible is the base, but we testified that if she studied she would find they compliment each other. She is willing to pray and search though so that is good. They know baptism is the ultimate goal or outcome of what they are doing, but they want to be sure that it is what we say it is. So more or less they understand! More than you can say for the large majority of people we teach.

We also have a crazy pastor guy that we are teaching and being pretty direct with. Every time we show up he puts his pastor behavior on and tries to teach us. His name is Faustino Baez and he can’t read. He is a member reference and wants to come to church but the member hasn’t passed by for fear. Faustino is an odd character for sure and I don’t know if he has honest intentions or just wants to correct our “pastor” as he says. The last time he said something to the extent of “don’t be surprised if I blow your pastor away!” I said, “don’t worry I don’t think you will.” So we may not be talking with him much longer, but I would like to get him to church at least so he has the chance to feel the spirit.

We have a nice family the family Acosta that is listening as well. We initially talked with the mom in her gateway and she wanted to reject us. I mentioned the problems that the youth today face and she thought twice and invited us to come back one weekend to teach her children. So we did. The oldest son that we have taught so far, Marcos (14) seems like a stud. He apparently said this last week that he was thinking about coming to our church on Sunday. He didn’t but still the thought was there. We were able to teach the mom and dad alone this last Saturday and we explained the Restoration and clarified some doubts they had about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. So apparently they have heard something about our church before. The mom at the end of the charla seemed set on reading and praying and said that she used to go to the Evangelical church or something. They are practicing Catholicism I think so...yeah. So little by little they are gaining interest. Really the last lesson surprised us because we thought that they weren’t that interested but it seems that maybe they are.

So those are the real hot investigators as for right now. Hopefully we can find more, because we have a lot of looking time and I don’t like that. Clapping clapping and more clapping. Not easy in summer time.

Mom you were wondering about my summary of the Book of Mormon. For the past several months I have been going through chapter by chapter doing a summary of the Book of Mormon and making connections between people and places and events. It was amazing because I gained a lot more insight to the Book of Mormon and I can really see the Lord’s hand in its preparation for our days. It truly is an inspired book. Plus my love for a lot of the Book of Mormon heroes has increased a lot too. The Book of Mormon really came alive a lot better as I carefully studied all the verses like that.

Also, yes we play monopoly. It is something you can do on pday and so we got sick of studying while being sick and took a break. It was in Spanish though and even I had to look up some new words.

The next planned baptism is for the 20th of December. Their are a few people that could be placed there but I really only have hope in Seferino and maybe his daughter Roxana if we get the chance to talk to her. She is kind of avoiding us at this time due to her seperation with Silvio. I miss talking to Silvio too. That kid was a stud. We try to make contact still from time to time through cell phone, but he hasn’t been answering. Either way they are both one step closer to baptism.

Elder Cortez is doing way awesome. He hardly seemed to have problems adapting, but there are still the things that get to him from time to time. He doesn’t like contacting much (I don’t blame him) which puts all that on my shoulders and that is not fun. Still we are trying to keep at it. He is excited that I am staying for three more weeks. We get along pretty well. We have no idea what will happen to him at the 3 week mark though. We’ll see. He is already doing better than a lot of missionaries that are out quite a bit longer so I don’t really feel worried about him.

I was kind of sad to hear that Elder Wirthlin died, but we knew it was coming I think. I don’t think I realized how old he was. He was a stud though! I loved his last gen conf talk too. It was really good.

Anyways, love ya all and hope you all have a great week!

Elder Aaron McDonald