Baptism Of Osvaldo

Where oh where is 2011 going?  Slow it down, speed racer!

Osvaldo was baptized last Saturday!  Oh, it was excellent.  It was raining, and I´m sure I´ve said in the past that when it rains here, the people act like it´s raining fire.  They don´t leave their houses and almost all the businesses shut down.  So I thought nobody was going to come, and I was freaking out.  The two people we had assigned to give short talks called us and bailed out 3 hours before the baptism.  2 hours before, the person who was going to offer the last prayer called to say he wasn´t going to come.  More freaking out.  But, luckily enough, a lot of people ended up coming.  Just not the people who had responsabilities haha.  He, being a bit older and kind of fragile, couldn´t be baptized standing up and being dunked towards his back.  So we brought him a chair, and he was dunked forward sitting down instead of backward.  His head wouldn´t go all the way down, so they ended up doing it a second time sitting down but backward, and he went under.  Took a bit of effort, but he got baptized haha.  And then after that, he got up and gave a beautiful testimony

Coolest 3 Minutes Of My Life

This past week was excellent!  I hope everyone´s week was as good as mine.  Here´s the rundown of what´s going on.

Yesterday, we had 6 investigators at church.  More than I´ve had in one week in a long time.  There is a kid who comes to play soccer with us at the church on Mondays, and we decided to go visit him last week.  We found his house, along with 2 other families that live in the same rental.  They all have 3 or more kids haha.  We decided to gather up their kids and teach them all something, and then ask their parents if we could bring them to church with us on Sunday.  Surprisingly, they said yes haha.  So Sunday morning we rounded up the little rugrats (I mean...children of God ) and took them all to church.  They loved it.  We showed them the video of the Restoration and then sent them off to Primary for the 3rd hour.  They had a blast.  There are even more people in their houses that we want to visit this week (especially their parents).  The parents of some of them went to church 2 or 3 times a few years ago, so that is a great entry point to talk with them.  They´re good kids, I hope to be able to get them in the water so they can grow up in the church environment with the Gospel in their lives before the temptations come too seriously and strongly.  Future missionaries they are :)

Wake Up Obrero!

Hey everyone :).  Good to write again this week.  There have been some changes here.

We are 4 missionaries here in Barrio Obrero (2 companionships).  Elder Yañez is in the other half if the area, and he has been here since I got here.  We lived in the same house for 5 1/2 months, and both went through a few companions but us two stayed together haha.  Well, because the amount of missionaries leaving this change is more than the amount that is coming in (and also because of the slower progress of the branch here), some areas have to be closed or joined because there won´t be enough missionaries to cover them.  Unfortunately, the other half of my area is one of them :(.  We got the call from the assistents yesterday, and they´re closing Obrero 1.2 and joining our 2 areas into 1 area.  Now we´re just one companionship here, my companion and I.  Bummer.  Our area just got wayyy big, and we have a lot of area to cover now.  And it´s a lot more lonely with just us 2, because Elder Yañez was a funny guy and we got along really well.  The funny thing is that he went to Republicano, and he´s going to be companions with Elder Ponce, the missionary I trained 2 changes ago who he lived in the house with haha.  There are good things about the change though.  Now we

Prayer and Practice

Another week down.  And thank goodness that this week it was a rockin´ one.

First, on Wednesday we had interviews with President Callan.  Those always motivate me and help me to focus myself.  That man is such an inspired person, it blows my mind.  The Spirit just radiates from him.  When he talks, you feel it just hit you in the heart.  But in a good way haha.  That animated me a lot.  Kind of sad to think that I´ll only have 1 or 2 more interviews with him.  And then he renewed my temple recommend.  It is reeeally weird to think that 2 years ago I got my temple recommend.  It definately doesn´t seem that long ago.  Don´t know when our next temple trip will be, but I hope to be using that new recommend soon!  I have a royal ancestor that is waiting patiently for me to perform these ordinances on his behalf that he can´t do himself.  That will be a really special moment for me, and I´m excited for it.  One of the strongest parts of my testimony is the temple.

Then with General Conference this passed weekend, how could it not be a rockin´ week?  Every single time, I think "No way this Conference will be better than the last one".  And it always is.  It was really cool too,