Happy Valentine's Day

Querido Familia,
Hey everybody, once again it's P-day and once again I didn't really
think about what I'm going to write, so I'll try and do my best. I
can't believe it's been a whole week already, every week goes by
faster and faster. So the highlights of this week were pretty cool.
Last Monday we had Family Home Evening just like every week, but it
was raining at six o'clock, so we were slow to get out the door to go
invite people to the activity. Just as we were leaving though, the
Mendoza family and their friends knocked on our door and were there
ready for Family Home Evening. It was pretty cool to actually have
people come to the activity without having to go bug them and remind
them that we were actually having it. It was a cool experience. We
have fun every Monday night with the investigators and this week was
no different.

Tuesday was probably the second best day of the week. That's because
we actually got some tables, chairs, shelves, and dishes for our
kitchen. It was awesome!!! Now we can actually gather together and
have some meals. That took like all day so it was pretty boring but
worth it. We had to go buy the furniture and things then get them back
to the house and clean the whole house so that we could actually have
the kitchen. All the while it was raining like CRAZY!!!! It rained for
about ten hours on Tuesday. There was tons of water on the streets.
I'm really getting sick of the rain. No, really I'm getting a little
sick. Nothing to be worried about, it's just that I'm feeling a little
under the weather today. And I'm pretty sure I know why. Our roof
isn't exactly built to code, so there's a leak in our roof. The water
is coming through the ceiling little by little. There's water all over
our ceiling on our room, and its dripping a little. We called the
President but they can't do very much until it stops raining because
the roof needs to dry. So we're waiting for it to stop raining. Don't
worry, it's nothing to overreact about but it's just making things
more interesting.

So Wednesday was really cool because we went to a baptism with our
investigators. There's this family that we found last week that is
absolutely golden. They accept everything we tell them, read pretty
much everything, and actually go to all the activities and church that
we have. Its a family that is actually married, they have five kids.
Three of the kids can get baptized. So we went to this other baptism
for them to go and see. It was a cool baptism and it allowed this
family to feel the spirit and see an actual church. This family
accepted the challenge to get baptized, all of them, on Thursday. So
we're going to have 5 baptisms this Saturday. I know that we were led
to them and they were prepared for us to teach them about the gospel.
We are only tools in the hands of the Lord to carry out his
preparations. We don't convert anybody, we just invite people to come
unto Christ and choose what they know is right. Sometimes they use
their agency to refuse us at this time, and sometimes it's just not
their time, but always, the hand of the Lord is in this work.

This week we also started doing English classes. We invite everybody
to this, but usually its the kids that come. We are starting to have a
good relationship with all the kids here in Characato. The English is
fun to teach because I actually know what I'm talking about. We've
only taught them like numbers, days of the week, months, and things
like that, but its still fun. They all enjoy it and it's a really good
way to get people introduced to where we have church and to us as
Elders. We also had a church movie night on Saturday. We showed The
Testaments. It was really awesome, everbody liked the movie and I know
some people were touched by the Spirit. It was the perfect movie
becuase it talks about The Book Of Mormon and how it really is another
Testament of Jesus Christ. People here all believe in Jesus, we just
have to make sure they know that The Book of Mormon wasn't written by
Joseph Smith. After the movie, one of our investigators who hasn't
come to church, told us how good it was of us to be here in Characato.
He said that the people here needed this good thing in their lives and
he was grateful for all of our help. It was cool, but he still didn't
come to church, that was kind of sad.

That's like the biggest obstacle here, getting people to church. But,
yesterday we had like thirty people at church. Its really cool to see
how the church is growing here. We started in an investigators house
with 8 people, and now we have members, a branch president, and
several new investigators coming to church every week. We really have
been blessed and I know sometimes I talk about the hardships, but
really this is a good experience for me. I'm making really good
friends here in the mission and I feel like I'm helping people become
better families and helping them find eternal blessings. I wouldn't
trade this for the world. I know I have to leave one day, but I don't
want to. I wish I could just read the scriptures, serve people, and go
to church every day, just becuase of the peace I feel when I do these
things.

Well that was my week, see you next week.

Love,

Elder Child