Whooaaaa......slow down

Hey Everyone!

Thanks for the emails.

I appologize for not being able to write last week. You might remember the similar problem last year. Puerto Rico has so many holidays in January and February. But I'm glad you got my letter so it was a little short becuase everything was closed for 3 kings day p-day was a little stressful and I wasn't able to write as much as I would like.

Wow, it's so crazy that it's been so cold lately! Well I guess January is always cold but... It's actually warming up here at least this week. Thanks for the worrying about sending clothes and shoes, but don't stress too much whatever you send will be great and really I don't want a ton because by the time it gets here I'll only have a few months left. So yes, it's official I will be coming home May 26th! President wasn't able to make arrangements to come home on the transfer to give me one more week to prepare before school starts. That's cool that Sam Skanchy came home. Tell their family high for me. Oh by the way tell grandma thanks for the christmas package. I did get it. I feel so bad I just don't have time to write letters very often but I will write her one today. But tell her thank you from me and from my companion.


Sounds like things have been crazy at home with the weather and dad having to move offices. Well it has been equally crazy here. Wow! What a week. I don't even know where to start. First, we have a couple that we are teaching that has had a baptism date since November. Becuase of many complications it has been moved several times. Well they have to get married first but the process here is very complicated and they don't really understand how it works and sadly neither do we. Basically they have to get a medical exam and blood tests and they have to go pick up these forms and then take it back to get a marriage license and they have a limited time to do it. Well they were going to get married on Christmas but we couldn't find someone who had a marriage license. Then they were going to do it on the first but they didn't go get the blood tests done until the day before and it takes a week for the results to come back so we cancelled the wedding. Well finally the results came back for the blood tests so he calls the relief society president and said I have the paper. So she called us and we made arrangements for a branch president to come and marry them and then he calls one day before the wedding and said that he was at the demographic registers office to get the marriage license and they were closed for the holidays. Turns out the relief society president thought that he had the marriage papers but he just had the results for the blood work. So once again, no wedding. So we changed it for this saturday. Well we got a phone call yesterday saying that they have to do everything before friday becuase they had a certain amount of time to do all this and since its been so long they have to be married by friday or they have to start the process all over again! So we had to move the wedding to thursday morning and we have about a three hour window that the branch president can drive out there and marry them, turn in the paperwork and then drive an hour and a half away to get to work on time. Wow, talk about stress. This morning we got a phone call telling us that we have to be in Ponce at 6:30 in the morning for an all day training meeting! Talk about stress. But I know that it will all work out.

So another funny story. Well as I said last time we have been struggling with investigators. We really have. But this week we have seen some small miracles. We've been trying to work with the members encouraging them to pray for missionary opportunities and we have received quite a few references and new families to teach which is great. Well we have been praying and fasting so that we can find people to teach. Well answers to prayers come quickly and in the most unexpected ways. Really, really unexpected. We have an investigator who has been coming to church every once in a while with his girlfriend that is less active. He was taught by the sisters only once before I got there and then went on vacation for a long time. They didn't even teach him a lesson they mostly just answered some questions. He has read every pamphlet the church has from front to back and is reading the Book of Mormon. But we could never seem to get  hold of him to teach. Well he showed up at church the week before last and this sunday. So we were excited because we were hoping to finally be able to teach him. Well while we are in a meeting on sunday, the ward mission leader announces that Juan will be getting baptized next monday. We were talking to other people and before we know it the whole branch is congratulating us and we were totally lost. We were like "what? how? when was this decided?". Turns out that after priesthood a high councilmen from another ward asked him when we was getting baptized and Juan just picked his own baptism date. The man had never even met him before and he extended a baptism date right then and there. Monday at 4:00. 8 days from then. We were in complete shock, because he hadn't received any lessons, we barely know him. It's been a little difficult because we've received a little bit of pressure from the leaders to teach him quickly so that he can be baptized that day but from the beginning I was really uneasy about it. We've been praying about it becuase really we want to do the right thing. But we went ahead and planned how it would be possible to prepare him for baptism in one week. We thought, well after praying and fasting maybe this is the answer to our prayers, maybe he really is ready, but these last three days we have felt that he really isn't ready. We want to make sure that he knows the doctrine and is actually living all the commandments and has a strong testimony. I don't want the people I teach to be inactive in a few months or years. It happens way too often here and I really want him to stay strong in the gospel. So we'll see what happens, we are going to teach him tonight and see then we will move the baptism date to the end of January. Wow, we were praying for investigators we never thought that suddenly we would have to teach someone to be baptized in a few days. haha.

Well that's whats been going on here. Lots of things to plan; lots of stress. Haha...from some really slow days to too much to do all at once. But that's the mission. Hope things are going well at home.

Love you all a ton.