Another week in Puerto Rico

Hey Family,

Thanks for the emails this week. Sounds like things are going good at home. I am so excited for Abby! BYU!! It will be fun to have Rachel and Abby there when I get back. Haha if they both haven't graduated by then. Sounds like everything else is going good. I am still shocked by the fact that Mom has a blogged but when I read a few parts that you sent me its a really cool idea. It made me hungry and made me miss Mom's food. But who better than to write a cooking blog? Happy Birthday to Erin and Dad!!! Hope you did something fun. I'm sure it involved German Chocolate Cake and valentine's day chocolates.

Well things here are good. I am still in Bayamon. But my new companion is Hermana Lopez. She was working in the next ward over. She is super nice, and really fun. She's from El Salvador. It's definately different working with a different companion because everyone has a different way of contacting people and a different way of teaching so it's been an interesting week of trying to find ways to mesh two different styles together but she is pretty awesome. This week was a little hard because it was raining a lot. Not rain like back home though. Think about when we have a big downpour, that is how it rains here. Nobody really leaves their homes, Knocking doors isn't the most productive and when we show up to appointments people don't answer the door because they are just chilling in their pajamas all day. But we keep plugging along.

I have found another thing that I am extremely grateful for that I have always taken for granted. Running water. You don't realize how many gallons of water it takes to wash dishes, shower, or flush a toilet until you don't have running water. This week the water system is down in Bayamon, I am not sure what happened exactly but the sistern or whatever is called broke. Luckily as missionaries we are required to have a certain number of gallons of emergency water on hand. We have had a enough for the last two days but today we have to go refill at the big trucks of water that the government has placed around town. We only had one hour of church because there was no water for the bathrooms and a lot of the businesses have shut down. Hopefully it will be back up in a few days. No worries, we're doing fine.

Just before Hermana Venegas left, we had a pretty cool experience with a family we found. A few days before we had found a young girl while knocking doors. She barely talked to us, and was super timid but she accepted a return appointment. When we went back to visit her she let us in and she and her older brother sat down on the couch. One by one as we were singing "I am a Child of God" more siblings and finally her Mom came in. So of course we introduced ourselves and the whole family started to listen. This family has 5 kids that are 21, 19, 17,13, 2 years old. It was a pretty good lesson and as Hermana Venegas was reciting the first vision in Joseph Smith's own words she had this feeling that she needed to show a picture of it, sometimes we show it but not always. After showing the picture the Mom, Abasita, put her face in her hands and started to cry. She then told us that two nights before she had had a dream where she dreamed of a forest with light, like she saw in the picture in the pamphlet but without people. Anyway, this family is amazing. We are going back to see them tonight they wanted to have a few days so that they could all take turns reading the Book of Mormon. All five of them, those that can read, committed to read and pray to know if it is true. Anyway, we are super excited for this family and another family we found this week. So hopefully things go well.

Well I have to go but love you all. I hope you have a marvillous week. Keep me updated on the fun things going on at home.