March 16, 2009
Hey family, how’s it going?
It’s been an interesting week. Still get rejected a lot but there is a lot of good stuff happening as well. We are pretty busy and something I didn’t tell you about last week is that Hermana Saenz died last Sunday Morning. I was really shocked and sad to hear about it at first, but I realized that she’s in a much better and happier place. She had been going through a lot of pain and problems with her health and I know she was ready to pass on. After all of our citas (appointments) fell through on Sunday evening, we went to the Saenz home to see her body and see how hermano Saenz was doing. This week we also dropped by twice to visit him. He has always said he needs a message from us every week and he looks forward to our visits. Now he says he needs us more than ever. He is sad that his wife is gone but he is also very happy for the knowledge we have that she is happy right now and that they will see each other again. We visited yesterday and two of his daughters were there as well. One of the daughters, Ana, lives with Hermano Saenz and has been inactive, but she came to stake conference yesterday. The other daughter and her husband had the lessons 7 years ago, but the husband didn’t want them to get baptized. But now he is interested in being baptized again, because he took the death of Inez Saenz pretty hard, and he said that it is just wrong and cruel to not let his family be baptized when they could die at any second. They don’t live in our area so we won't be teaching them, but the missionaries in their area will, so maybe the death of Hermana Saenz will lead to the rebirth of her daughter’s family.
Earlier this week we visited Vera and taught her about the priesthood and Relief Society and she is doing great. We also taught Leo Alvarado and Mario Aguerro again and we were able to set baptismal dates with both of them. They are both set to be baptized on March 28th. Before that though, Mario has to stop drinking coffee, which I know he can do (he’s been off drugs for a year). Mario also has to make it to Church at least one more time. This is difficult for him because of his brother with epilepsy that he takes care of. Just a fun fact is that Mario has a dog named Shakira. Anyway, Leo has to stop smoking before his baptism as well. He has a couple of unfinished tattoos and the other day he asked if he could just finish them. We told him probably not and he should pray and ask God if finishing them would be okay. Then he said that he already knew the answer and he decided that he wouldn’t finish them or add any more tattoos. Please pray for Leo to get over smoking as well. Leo has a friend in another city in our zone that works with him and our bishop (Obispo Cruz). His friend is getting baptized this next week. Elder Fallevai (a really cool, strong, humble, Tongan Elder who has learned both Spanish and English on his mission) and a new Elder fresh out of the MTC, are teaching him. It is good that two friends are getting baptized around the same time so they can support each other. Both of them made it to Stake conference yesterday. Our mission pres, President Arbizu, his wife, the Temple pres, and our stake pres, President Argueros, spoke. It was a really interesting stake conference and some other people talked and shared their testimonies as well.
On Saturday, I taught English classes again. The hard part about teaching, is that sometimes people are at different levels and not everyone shows up every week so it’s hard to meet everyone’s needs, but so far I think I’m doing a decent job. The people really seem to appreciate free lessons and all of our students are non members. I wore my glasses to class so I would feel more professor like. *Ü* Today isn’t p’day, because on Wednesday we are going to the temple and our p’day was switched to Wednesday this week. We still have permission to e-mail today though (obviously). This week we have appointments with Leo and Mario. We are also going to visit Vera and Andrea (daughter who is usually always listening to the lessons with Vera but is distracted by her 3 year old son) and teach them more. We have an appointment set up with Laura (who goes to English classes and is pretty cute) and with Jose Robles (investigator who works in chocolate factory). My companion and I are almost out of money this month so we are trying to ration. Unfortunately the member haven’t been as eager to feed us this week so I’ve been eating a lot of pb&j sandwiches (we don’t have much time, space in the fridge to store stuff, money, or energy to cook). I will probably have to take out some personal money. I can write letters whenever I have time on p’day. Unfortunately sometimes I don’t have time. I have an hour every p’day to read and type emails. Sometimes we do it for a little longer. The scripture covers I ordered don’t have a temple on them, but you can order some with the temple on them (my companion has the Las Vegas Temple on his). I’m happy about the good news about our family and I hope everything goes well for everyone. I’ll be praying for you. I don’t know what else to say but I'm going to send some pics. Actually, I’m late for our lunch appointments so ill have to send the baptism and other pics next week. Sorry.
Luv
