January 14, 2009
Hello. Life’s good here. It's cold, but not too cold. My companion Elder Moreno lets me borrow one of his jackets. I've been sick ever since I left the MTC and everyone here is sick too because we always have to go out and knock in the cold so we never get better. I just cough a lot and have a cold so it’s no big deal. I’m still in a companionship of 3 but this week Elder Dickens is going to be at doctors offices during the day because he’s been having knee problems for a couple years and he might need surgery. His parents came out yesterday and we met them. We still don't know what is going to happen to him. I sleep on an air mattress on the floor, but it’s pretty comfortable. We have the car every other day, so we use it to go to referrals that are in other cities like Damascus. I am Spanish speaking but we still talk to English people too. We had a baptism on Saturday. She is a 23 year old woman named Cindy. She is going through rough times right now. Her husband was deported and she doesn't have a job. She also has a baby girl, probably about a year old. But Elder Moreno has been teaching her for awhile and she had enough faith to be baptized. The baptism was really nice and a lot of new members and investigators we are teaching were able to attend. One of them Ana Sedillo. Ana was set to be baptized on Saturday too, but she canceled on us. At the baptism it looked like she was touched by the spirit, so we're hopeful for her. We have visited her a couple times since then and we showed her the Testaments movie. There is a woman named Maria who was baptized a couple weeks ago who we have been working with lately as well. Her four kids want to be baptized as well, but her husband is against it. Also this week we found a family that looks solid. They were a referral in Damascus, a woman and her mother named Xenia and Blanca. We taught them the first lesson about the apostasy and the Restoration and they agreed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon.
Other than that we knock doors a lot. We've only been invited in once and a lot of times people tell us to come back later (make appointments) but don't answer the door when we show up. A couple times the people just slam the door in our face but it's kind of funny so I always laugh. My companions don't always think it's funny but I do for some reason. We always get dirty looks at the store too and it baffles me as to why people dislike us so much. Yesterday was an interesting day so ill tell you about that. We started out with a great day planned, but many people canceled on us. We wake up at 6:30 every day and we're supposed to exercise but everyone just usually sits on the couch. Elder Moreno usually exercises but since he’s sick he doesn't. We get ready (shower, eat, get dressed) at 7:00 and at 8:00 we have personal study and at 9:00 we have companion study. At 10:00 we have language study and the rest of the day we work. Yesterday Elder Moreno and I had an appointment with a preacher at 10:00. Elder Dickens wasn't with us the whole day (he was a the doctor) so I drove to Damascus where we had the appointment. But I’m running out of time so ill finish next week.
