March 2, 2009

Well Helloooooooooo
Wow! What can I say about this week.....
God really is in this work. Me and my companion saw miracle after miracle and had our prayers answered in so many different ways.
Well best news first. Oscar, will be getting baptized on Saturday! Woohoo!!! My first one! He was living with his girlfriend, and that's a problem, you can't get baptized when that happens. So one day he called and said, the church is true, we are getting married on Monday, today. The bishop is going to marry them and we are going to have a little party. So I am going to a wedding today. Ha! But yup, his baptism is on Saturday. We are glad to see that he decided to get married.
Ok next... We have a baptism date with Elisa, our other investigator on March 14! We went over there to set her for a date. She opened the door and said she was busy, but felt ready to be baptized and asked us to come back tomrrow to set a date. We did and felt by the 14th we would have her ready! She has come to church the last 2 weeks, including yesterday, she was very very sick. But came anyways. I am very excited for her!
This week we will most likely have 4 more baptismal dates set with Miguelangel, Julio, Veronica, and Georgina. We have totall turned the Spanish north upside down! Yesterday between Me and Elder Shumway in the North, and Elder Clawson and Petersen in the south we had 17 investigators at church. (We are all in the same ward, just 2 different areas). Miguelangel and Julio came to church again! That was a miracle in and of itself because, they live kind of far and Hermano Barrera who said he would take them was sick. So we called a recent convert, gave them the info and hoped they would go find them and bring them to church. You have no idea the joy that filled me when they walked into church! Ah it was great.
We talked with them about baptism too. They said they love going to church and wanted to read a little more from the Book of Mormon before they committed. Well we are seeing them again Wednesday and we think by then they will be ready. They are awesome! And the ward members are all really nice to investigators, because everyone in the ward is a new convert. ha! It's great.
Veronica, she just got here about 10 days from Mexico. She has a 4 year old daughter who is paralyzed from the middle of her stomach down and has mental problems. It's sad, but that little girl is so cute. Veronica said she felt like she had no meaning in her life, and then she had that girl, and now everything she does is for her. She loves her daughter so much and has found purpose in her life. She said she prayed to God and told him that if he could help her get the papers to leave Mexico and come here and find a doctor here for her girl she would do everything she could to find the truth.
Well..... She is now here. Hermano Dixon, the ward mission leader is a doctor. So we hooked her up with him. Now her daughter has a doctor, and he is going to help her for free and go through the therapy with her. And we found her the second day she got here. It's amazing how everything fell into place with her. God really did help her and then sent us.
And Georginia is best friends with 2 recent converts in our ward and recently moved in with them. We talked to her last night about Baptism and she wants it. We are going to give her a date this week. She is already prepared. Ha it's great! So this week has been amazing. But I am not done yet...
We got a call from a woman tamed Tammy Bailey, who said her friend Maria is in desperate need of the gospel. Tammy and her family is like a Utah family, ha! Pictures of the Salt Lake Temple up in her house, married a returned missionary, just a nice mormon home. Ha the first one I have been in since being here.
Well we found out from Tammy that her friend Maria is divorced, her husband is mormon and so are her 3 daughters. She moved in with her dad and he abuses her and drinks. We found out she tried to commit suicide. So we taught her in the home of Tammy, and wow.... Probably the most powerful lesson I have had yet. We taught the Atonement, and her purpose here and how she is loved by God and she is his daughter. And as we taught she just began to cry. It was....incredible, and Tammy doesn't speak Spanish but she was crying, and you could just tell something powerful was there. We went with the intentions of teaching the first lesson, but we didn't, we were directed in a different direction. Which was definately for the best. She didn't move after the lesson. She just sat there. Just overwhelmed with emotion I think. We will be teaching Maria again this Wednesday.
We took a road trip out to Wahoo Nebraska! That was awesome! I finally saw the "real" Nebraska. I have been in the city my whole mission. But on our road trip we saw so much open farm land!!! I was so amused by it! We were so excited! ha it was funny how amused we were at pure nothingness. Well we got out to Wahoo and found the Lopez family. What an amazing family. A husband a wife and their 1 year old daughter. It was her birthday so we had cake with them. :)
But wow they knew it was true. They said they would come to church even though it was an hour away. But we had a huge snow storm on Saturday, so they weren't able to make it. But they did invite us back so we are going to road trip it again on Wednesday. They are cool!
Well that was our crazy week! And this week is going to be equally as awesome! Definately a week full of miracles.
So it seemed like we had problems the first few weeks with people not being married.
Well now we are having problems with people going to jail. Ha.... Yeah. Oscar, could be going for getting into an accident on a suspended license. He didn't know it was suspended. But a member of the 70 gave us permission to baptize him.
Allister, the COOLEST investigator ever! By the way he came to church with his less active girlfriend, and said I want to be a member, what do I have to do. So that was cool, that happened last Sunday. He is so so funny! Like he doesn't have a care in the world and he could be going to jail for driving 3 different times on a suspended license. If he doesn't, he is getting baptized. And then Juan, another investigator, goes to jail today, for beating up his sister on Saturday night. So yeah.... It's just crazy!
The only person I speak English to is Elder Shumway. And we mostly try and speak Spanish together, so it's like I am in a totally different country. My spanish is coming along. Elder Shumway told me it takes time, which it totally does! But I am getting more. What I am trying to do now is stop translating in my head and just knowing that when someone says like.... Tengo, it means I have. Just getting rid of english and making spanish my first language. It's hard but it's starting to work. Just ya know when I look at a ball it's not a ball it's a pelota. So yeah... my english is beginning to suffer, but that's a good thing! Slowly but surely it's getting better every day.

I love you all very very much!! Stay safe!!
Love Always,
Elder Moore