April 4, 2012

The Elders in the apartment: Alex, Elders Gonzalez, Veintimillas, Forrest, Wride and Elder Torres (on the floor)

Celebrating Elder Veintimilla's birthday...

with a cake sent by his cousin.

Hello family,

Well, this past week has been crazy and awesome!! Our piso [apartment] has a total of 6 baptismal dates, 5 of which are happening within a month from tomorrow. We have Alberto who has a date for the 7th, and that´s one from Elder Forrest and me. Then on the 14th Elder Wride and Elder Torres have Natalia, an 18 year old Dominican girl. Then the others are scheduled for the 15th, 28th (which finishes off the month of April), and one on the 5th of May. Then the 23rd of June we have Efrain so we´ll see how that one works. Well, enough about that, on to my week.

Saturday was super cool!!! Elder Wride (the district leader) and I did exchanges and it was a super cool day!!! We went first to see a guy called Carlos and he´s a super cool guy!! He said in that lesson when we invited him to read the Book of Mormon, "I´ll try to...NO, I will read, I WILL read for curiosity." Super cool guy! After him we went to see Natalia and taught her about the 10 commandments as well as prophets. First though we helped her finish cleaning the kitchen so that it would go faster. We took the metro to her house, which was fun. After her, we took the metro back and had lunch with some recent converts. The guy´s name I don´t remember, but the lady´s name is Milagro, and heck, what a milagro [Spanish for miracle] she is!!! She´s the best member a missionary could ever dream of!!! She´s sharing the gospel as well as giving out copies of the Book of Mormon and trying to see if her friends would meet with the missionaries!! After that we tried to get another lesson, but nothing worked out. We then took the metro to the church and watched conference as well as talked to Alberto a bit. After conference Alberto had his baptismal interview and Elder Torres and I taught a pretty new investigator from the Dominican Republic. For the first three lessons that we had, we weren´t able to get her to take the Book of Mormon, but this time we left her with one and she said that she will read it. Super awesome day Saturday was.

Sunday we went to the church to watch the priesthood session at 11am, but the internet wasn´t working so Elder Forrest, Gonzalez, Veintimilla, and I went to the stake center next to the temple and watched the last half there in English. We then had a snack in between the priesthood session and the Saturday evening session which began at 2 pm – one hour break. After that session, we went back to San Sebastian to teach a less active family and for Alberto to have his interview with President Watkins. We then had the Sunday morning session of conference, live at 6 pm and that was the end of that day. Alberto is good to be baptized too so we´re making all of the preparations. Monday we saw Alberto to explain to him about baptism and how it will go. We´ve also called the Elders of Pavones (the place where the Stake Center is) to have them fill up the font that day, but we will remind them every now and again. Tuesday was Elder Veintimilla´s birthday so at the end of the day we celebrated his birthday with a cake that his cousin got him. I hope that everything at home is doing well!! Take care and I´ll talk to you again in a week. Love you all!

Elder Bauer