Toa Baja and two baptisms this week

Hey Family,

Hope things are going good this week. Sounds like everyone is really busy between work and school. Good luck with work Dad hope you get all your returns done. Good luck on finals Rach. Don't stress out too much but enjoy your last few days in London. I didn't go to France so I don't know anything about it but I am super jealous take lots of pictures and tell me all about it.

Things here are good here. Toa Baja is a really great ward. I still don't know anybody but I am excited to serve in this ward because there are a lot of really great members. I'm not going to lie its been a pretty hard week. Hermana Thornton has been sick these last few transfers and even though she has been to the doctor several times she still isn't better or something else comes up. Its hard because she has no energy and really horrible headaches and dizzyness. So we spent quite a bit of time in the apartment this week. I felt bad because I know she feels miserable and she was a good sport about it and we tried to work as much as we could and we taught most of the lessons we had set up but she just didn't have the energy to knock doors some days. So we would go back to the house and we were able to count finding time by going through the area books (these are binders that keep track of all the contacts we make so like everyone you ever contact you write in the book so other missionaries later on can contact them. It also has the teaching records for former investigators). So I spent hours this week calling former investigators or contacts trying to set up appointments. That gets old pretty fast. But its good to try and go back and find people that were listening to the lessons that maybe at the time weren't interested or ready but maybe they are now. Hopefully this week will be better. We are going to be really busy this week because we have two baptisms coming up! Jose and Madeleine. Madeleine was supposed to get baptized this week but she was sick and had a lot of school projects this week we won't be able to finish the lessons in time so we put her baptism date back a week and we are going to have a double baptism with Jose on the 24th. They are both amazing. Jose is especially excited for his baptism date. I just love how enthusiastic he is about the gospel. He went to his first fast and testimony meeting yesterday and loved it. He told us that he couldn't help but think what he would say when he would be up there bearing his testimony. He takes his Book of Mormon with him everywhere and always reads it when he has a free moment at school. When his friends made fun of him for reading it all the time and saying, I don't know how you can read that its so long and the letters are small and it looks so boring. he started saying "well you read Lord of the Rings for the tenth time and instead they could read just a few verses of the Book of Mormon" he tells them how much it would change their life. He and Luis and are going to talk to one of their best friends today to see if we can come teach her the lessons. It is so great to see young people get so excited about the gospel and also want to share it with their friends.

We had a really great zone conference on Friday where we talked about how we can work better with the Bishop. We met with him last night with the elders that also serve in our ward. He said that his main goal is to get 150 people in Sacrament each week. So we have a giant list of the names of less active members that we are going to go out and find. We want to start working with the members and going on splits, bringing them to our lessons but then also going to visit less active members. There are so many in this ward. But we are excited and up for the challenge.

Well hope everything goes well this week. Thanks for sending the package mom. My asthma is doing fine everything is back to normal. Don't worry Dad, I'm wearing sunscreen.

Love you all a ton. Have a good week.