Monday, October 1, 2012

Well, this week has been a crazy and fun week!  I forgot to tell you, but here in the ward that I'm in there are 4 missionaries.  They combined my area together with the other 2 missionaries and their area to form a ward.  This happened about 8 months ago.  Anyway, because of that we have a ton of less active members in the ward that we have been working with the last 7 weeks.  We need to have 21 active priesthood holders to qualify as a ward and we had 18 when I first got here.  As of now, with the help of the other missionaries that I live with and the couple missionaries (Elder Hill and Hermana Hill), we have 22 active priesthood holders in the ward.  So, as of right now, we qualifty as a ward! We're pumped because since we qualify as a ward we are going to combine with 6 other wards close by to form a stake! Vamo Arriba! It's been a lot of hard work and problem solving with the menos activos ["less active"] because a ton of them won't go to church because they are offended by some other member.  It's really frustrating at times because people are holding grudges for lame things.  But anyway, it's all good and we are working hard to bring them all back.

This last Tuesday we had interviews with our mission president, President Armstrong.  It was good to talk to him face to face again.  We had a good chat and talked a lot about the work in San Francisco. In the past there had been a lot of problems with the missionaries, the members, and the bishop.  As of right now, however, everything is fine and he wanted to know how we fixed the problem!  He also told me he never worries about me.  We laughed when he said that because in all my weekly letters to him I always close with: "Don't worry about me, President!"  He really likes how I end my letters.  Anyway, all is good!

This last Sunday Luis blessed the sacrament! He's a stud!  He's going to get the Melquisedec priesthood [English: Melchezidek priesthood] in 2 weeks! We´re pumped!  I also gave a talk in sacrament meeting about "Missionary Work and the Importance of Members and their Testimonies."  It went awesome!  Many members came up to me afterward and thanked me for my talk.

This next week is General Conference and we missionaries are stoked!  There's a stake center about 15 minutes from our house so we're going to go there for Saturday and Sunday to watch conference. They will have conference in Spanish and in English!  I'm going to go to the room with English!  I'm really pumped to watch conference and hear what the prophet has to say.  Now that I'm in the mission field, I've really grown an appreciation for General Conference!

Anyway, all is well and I'm doing awesome!  I love you guys so much!  I can´t wait to hear from you!

P.S.  Attached are two photos:  Ana and Luis' baptism, and Ana (wife of Luis) when we went to the temple grounds.