25 November 2013

Letter to All:

¨Rain with sun, lucky day!¨

That´s a saying here. So Saturday night we decided to go visit Felix, we hadn't seen him for about 3 weeks, and there he was. When we showed up he said that phrase. Lucky day, when you find people you don´t expect to find. He´s still going well, he´s still getting over his problems. Hopefully we can get him to church next Sunday, he has a job now and is working a ton.

Wilmer and Flor didn´t come to church because they has a commitment, but Flor is doing well. She has begun to defend the church when other friends talk bad about it. Wilmer still is drinking, and I´m pretty sure he does marijuana too. But we had a powerful lesson with them. We asked Wilmer how he was doing with the word of wisdom and he said badly. We kept talking and I felt I had to share Alma 22:15-18 with them. Then I invited them to abandon their biggest sin, so that they can have this hope they desire and so that they can know God. I was very bold with them but they understood well, hopefully they will apply it to their lives.

Genaro came to church, we had been teaching him for almost 2 months and he finally came and it turns out one of the member is an old friend of his. So today we are going to visit him with the friend.

Also Wendi and Isaid came to church, they are new investigators. They are friends of Cyril. We had always gone to the house of Cyril, but he was never there. Turns out he´s outside of the country. So we decided to talk to them more, and we taught Wendi and Isaid and they came to church that next Sunday.

In church 52 people came, we had 3 investigators and the other Elders did great with 9 investigators! After not having investigators for 2 weeks they had 9. I told them to be patient, one of the elders in these weeks told me he didn´t want to be here anymore. I just told him to be patient and he´ll find people ready to accept the gospel.

President Russell came to church as well, he gave a talk about the importance of being founded in the restored gospel. How we shouldn´t be like those trees with shallow roots and that fall when a storm comes, we should have deep roots into the gospel so we fall not. It was good for the members to hear that.

A lot of members are looking to help us in the work when we started this activity- Best Branch Missionary. It´s going to be a great success. We are starting to work as a team, things are flowing, and the mission leader is finally going to meet with us. The members are interested in visiting the people we are teaching. I´m very content, president was very happy to see the success. I just hope it will continue when after I´m gone. I´m going to do the best I can to leave my area well off for the next one who comes by.

The other week I wrote and asked the president if I could open a new area. He talked to me on Sunday and he said, "Sorry, 50 Elders are going to leave soon and only 30 are coming in. So actually instead of opening areas I´m closing them." Kind of a bummer but, oh well. He said, ¨maybe you´ll finish the mission in Santo Tomas.......I doubt it.¨

Also where we eat lunch the guy is an excommunicated member, but he´s going to get baptized Saturday! I blessed his baby. I´m so happy for him, he will be a great support for the branch now!

This week we did a little sightseeing and we had some good, good food!

We´ll take care all!

Elder Willden