Arecibo is amazing!

Hey Everyone,


Hope everything is going well. Sounds like Dad is having fun chasing trains. haha. Hope you start feeling better Erin, and hope school is going well for all of you. You'll have to let me know how everything is going at BYU. Thanks for the postcard ab, I love getting a postcard from my home town. Sounds like you have been super busy mom. Good luck with all that. It's too bad you can't fedex me some warm homemade bread and some homemade soup, there's nothing like that here and it's too hot to eat soup. Tell everyone in the ward hi for me.

It was sad to leave Toa Baja especially after being there 6 months and President told us to just pack and leave we were aren't to say goodbye to anyone, just our investigators. So that was extremely hard. But luckily since Arecibo is the same stake I might be able to see some of them at General Conference. It's crazy that it's almost October. Well it's been a crazy week. Whitewashing an area (when two brand new missionaries that don't know an area are sent there) is crazy but the branch is amazing. We are still getting lost and we don't have too many people to teach but we are finding a few and we are teaching Nicole who is amazing. She is getting baptized the 8th of October. We were going to do it a week earlier but because it General Conference and she would have to wait a week to be confirmed on the 9th she decided to do it on the 8th. We are looking for people to teach but when we do I know we are going to have a lot of success because the branch is so amazing. It is a branch but it's just about the same size in attendance as my last two wards. The branch is really unified and the members are working really hard with the missionary work. Because for awhile there weren't missionaries the members really stepped up and starting doing some amazing things. One thing that they do every thursday night is called visitas de pastoreo which are basically where everyone meets at the church and they are assigned to go out and look for less active members and invite them to come back to church. They have seen a lot of success and the members are really excited about it. The member attendance in missionary correlation meeting last night was phenominal, I have never seen anything like it. There are missionary firesides and Cine Mormon activities where they show church movies. It's really quite amazing, after not have missionaries they have really realized that they have a big role in the mission work. We have quite a few part member families and less active families that the leaders have asked us to work with and we are really excited and I'm sure the work will start picking up once we are able to contact them and start teaching on a regular basis.

The area that we are working in is actually pretty small. President wants us to work close to the church and mostly on foot. The branch area is huge but he wants us to focus on areas close to the chapel and doesn't want us to go into the country. Our apartment is about five minutes from the church and we live about ten minutes from the Atlantic Ocean. Arecibo doesn't have beaches its more like rocks but it's really pretty cool to look out and see the Atlantic Ocean. It's been awhile since I'm been in the city and it reminds me of being back in Bayamon.

Well anyway I have to go we have to meet a member to go teach Nicole. Hope things are going well.

 Love you all!