Wednesday P-day again.

Hey Everyone,


Sorry I couldn't really write last week cause I only had like 10 minutes. Puerto Rico has so many holidays, its a good thing that our p-days will be on wednesday from now on. Thanks for all the emails. Sounds like you had a ton of fun in Spring City sounds like you all had a ton of fun. Wow, that's really cool that you got called to be temple workers mom and dad. I know you will have the most amazing experience. I can't wait to be able to go to the temple when I get back I really miss it. I have always taken for granted that we have a temple so close by. Ab, how did registration go? Did you get all the classes you wanted?

Well things are pretty good here. We are still working with Julio, he knows that he needs to make the decision about whether or not to be baptized but he says that he hasn't received an answer yet. We are just working with him to try and help him with his doubts. He is really confused about lots of things because he has been to so many different churches that he is really confused especially about things like gifts of the spirit and things like that. It's a common problem here because there is so much confusion about religion. Lots of evangelical churches and pentecostal churches. He has visited just about everyone of them. We are also working with Linette still. Wow, she is amazing. We have only been able to visit her once recently. But Hermana Torro told us that her mom had told her that come August she couldn't go to church anymore. Linette told her that she would start helping around the house more cleaning etc. if she would let her go to church. So this last week she has been cleaning, babysitting etc and her mom showed up saturday night with a dress and said this is for you to wear to church. The clothes she wears are a little short and inmodest but her mom obviously recognized taht and bought her a really cute modest dress. So we are praying hard for her. She is so amazing. We have a few other investigators but we are looking a lot right now.

One of the new changes with President Alvarado is that all the meetings will be in english, because he wants those that don't speak english to learn english. It's hard because my companion doesn't speak very much english at all but we are trying to speak in english more and practice all the time. He has asked us to focus on the family and to try and find and teach families not just individuals. We are focusing on the doctrine of christ which is faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end. But we are focusing a lot of baptism. Extending baptism dates during the first lesson has been somethign that has been a little hard for me. I have always thought more on the line of I don't want to baptize people too fast or set a baptism date if they don't understand very much because I don't want them to go inactive right away. I also worry that people are going to be like wait wait wait I just met you half an hour ago why are you asking me to get baptized? So that's been hard for me. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it and praying about it. We've had a few people that reacted that way but we've also had some really spiritual lessons. I know that this is not only what President Alvarado wants us to do but what the other church leaders want us to do it is helping us focus more on teaching with the spirit and helping us know if the people are prepared or if they just want to learn about the church. That happens a lot, people are taking the lessons but they have no intention of every attending church or being baptized they just like to learn. But I know that as I stretch myself and even though I sometimes don't have the most confidence in my teaching I know that as we continue to try and teach more with the spirit we will see some changes. We are already seeing that as we practice teaching it differently there is a different spirit that we aren't just here to convince people that this is the true church but to teach them the doctrines that will help them gain eternal life and not just individually but as a family. Anyway those are some things that I have been working on lately.

Well not much else has been going on here. Hope you all have fun in San Francisco.

Love you all.