There were a lot of "other" activities this week (03/16/2010)

Well this week has been interesting. We still got our teaching in but we have had to do some other things as well. We did some service and we had two conferences, one for the branch and one for the mission.

First an update on the investigators-

Jasinto-He is still doing really well, he didn't come to church this week but he did read 3 Nephi 11 and understood it very well. We haven’t asked him if he wants to be baptized yet but he has a strong interest in coming to church. He is also going through some tough times right now because his brother back in Mexico is having a child out of wedlock and his mother doesn't know what to do with him. He said he won’t listen to anyone so he is having struggles with that. But he is a great guy and reads very well. We left 2 Nephi 31 so he can understand why we get baptized and who gave us this example.

Carlos- He is still doing well. We went over on Saturday night and told him to just put everything aside and find out if this church is true, because if it is, that means everything else we have talked about is true. He said he would pray that night if the Book of Mormon was true and if the Church was true. He didn't come to church because he had to work and he was unable to meet with us yesterday but we are going to meet with him tomorrow so we will see how that goes.

Jorge is still doing well. We asked him if he would be baptized on the 17th of April and he said he would be yet he still didn't come to church on Sunday. It is really frustrating trying to help someone you love when they won’t put in their part.

Heraldo- We were able to meet with him on Sunday night. He called up and asked if we could meet with him. It was a really good lesson. He finally asked some of his doubts. He wanted to know how he could get closer to God and we told him he had to pray and ask questions and feel things and that will get him closer than anything. Well he said I can't tell the difference from when it is just a good feeling or actually the Holy Ghost. So we worked with him on that and he came with a better understanding I hope. He is also a good guy and so hopefully he can start feeling the Holy Ghost.

Well that’s about all we have for investigators but last week we were able to help a member family tile their bathroom. That was really fun. We just plastered it and stuck the tiles on. It looks really good from what I could tell. They seemed to like it, they asked us to come back again so that is a good sign.

Also on Saturday we had Hispanic conference that was for all of the branches in the whole southeast part of Washington. It was really fun. I got to see a bunch of families from my old areas. It was fun. One interesting thing was they asked me to play the piano for the Primary kids. Those songs are really hard. Probably because I had never practiced them. But I did and I realized they are hard because they are so pretty. I never realized how beautiful primary songs are. Probably because I haven’t sung them in about 9 years. I also had to play the piano in Sacrament meeting on Sunday with one song I had never played before and was unable to practice. I stumbled a little bit but it wasn't that bad. I was grateful the Lord helped me out or else it would've been bad.

Yesterday we had a Zone Conference. (FYI mom they had rice with a kind of a sweet n' sour sauce with meatballs, it was good so maybe another idea). It was a good one. We are having this program where we are going to work extremely hard this transfer and on the 17th of April, have a mission wide baptism where we are going to have just one big baptismal service in our stakes and invite everyone to be baptized, who has been taught of course. It should be really fun and rewarding.

Well that’s about all I have. The other day I was talking with Elder Urbina about SD, I can't believe you guys go again in a few months....that’s only 3 transfers, anyway, I was telling him how you go to the temple and my whole life I always thought it was weird that you went to the temple while we were on vacation. Well now, since I have gone through on my own, and realized that you never get to go together with everyone like that, any other time. It made sense to me. I thought I would just throw that in. And Mom, you would have a lot of fun with Elder Urbina, he gets startled very easily. You and I would be dying laughing at some points.

Well I better get going. Have a great week