Family,

Well another week has gone by. The weather here has been great. It has been in the 70's and is starting to heat up. It's nice not having to ride a bike in a suit. That's too bad that the SD card is ruined. You can just send it back to me to see if it will work on my camera seeing how I took the pics with my camera or just throw it away because it is pointless. Unless does it allow you to take pics? If so you can send it to me and I can take some more pictures, thanks. Just one quick note that happened this week that I think it will blow your mind.... We as missionaries can text now! Obviously it is for proselyting purpose only but it is something new and who would have ever thought that it would have happened. We have been using it a lot actually because people don't answer calls but they will answer a text.... Pretty ridiculous!

This week has flown by actually...

The Ward here is just ballin' it real hard! I don't know if I have ever told you that we teach English every Tuesday? When I first got here they had already been doing it and so we continued and we would just invite everyone to it. The first like 4 weeks or 5 weeks of it there was maybe one person there or usually no one would come. My companion and I have taken it over pretty much and we just teach it because the other two elders don't come now for some reason. But the reason I say that the Ward is doing great is because we average probably 6 people a week to English class. They are mostly members, but we do invite all of our investigators to it and this last week we had one come. Her name is Sonya. The story behind her is that we were just walking two weeks ago in an apartment complex and she was walking somewhere too and we didn't talk to her at first and she said, Ustedes hablan espanol muy bien. Which is, you guys speak Spanish good. And we had never talked to her before and so we didn't know how she knew, and so we talked to her and got a return appointment. Turns out she is the sister of a former investigators wife, I think I've told you this before. But anyways she came on Tuesday and had instant fellowship. The Ward was having a party for the Primary and she brought her kids and really what happened was that she went to the party with the members while we taught the english class. It was great!!! I love this Ward because the members that come to English class love us and they just latched onto her and fellowshipped her. We then had a great lesson with her with a member on Thursday. It was the first lesson and we just flat out told her our purpose and invited her to be baptized. She said no, that she had already been baptized and then we were able to share the restoration with her to help her see that she needs to be baptized again by proper authority. The Spirit was there very strongly because she really needs the atonement in her life to forgive others and the member we had with us just bore solid testimony that this is the way to be able to do it.

We had a great District meeting last week of letting people know our purpose right from the start. Because a lot of people think that we just come over there to talk about Christ and that is it. And so what this training was was to tell them our purpose which is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. And then after that we invite them to be baptized. And so we have been applying that very well this week. I think every first lesson that we have had we have invited them to be baptized. The good thing about that is 1. They see our purpose and 2. It brings out concerns. It's been really good being able to do that. It's always fun to invite someone to be baptized because the Spirit is very strong when that happens.

It was yet another week getting people to church. We had a solid 6 people say they were coming and we honestly thought they were going to come, but yet none of them came. It is frustrating but part of the work.

So funny thing about the whole texting thing is that we bashed with a guy over texting. We taught him that day and he texted us later and sent us three scriptures. The ones that say don't add or take away from this book, because we talked about the Book of Mormon. And so we texted him back and he just kept sending us other scriptures and we were just like yeah we believe in those. And then he stopped. And so me and my companion talked about it and we decided he is probably not open to our message and we probably won't got back for that reason and so my companion texted him all these Apostasy scriptures and told him that his church is part of those scriptures and that his church is wrong, and then he sent him what the Church of Jesus Christ has, mainly apostles and prophets, and the authority. He never texted us back and that is the end of that. It was pretty ridiculous but that is how people are, they are just blinded.
Gustavo, our long time investigator, is finally coming around. The Spirit is really working on him. He is now going to look for a different job, so he can come to church and he is reading more and praying more. We met with him once this last week, and that is what he told us. At the same time he is still kind of hard headed and stubborn, but the Spirit is really working on him. He didn't come to church either this week because he wouldn't answer the phone on Sunday morning so that we could go pick him up, which was frustrating but I guess it happens.

Well that is about it. I love you all! Have a good week.

By the way Dad, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!