hello everyone! i love you!
elder cooley and i had a fun new years in our apartment, we had to be in at 6... i stayed up finishing the book of mormon because we had a mission wide challenge to finsih the new testament and book of mormon in the month of december and highlight all the miracles that we see, since its miracle month here. our goal was 80 baptisms and we fell just short with 70 just in december. it was more than any other month in the mission ever so that was great! it was 1 per companionship. elder cooley and i have been blessed with a lot of opportunities to teach in our area and so we had two- mom you asked if we had that last one- yes anthony (the blind man) was baptized on the 27th and elder cooley confirmed him last sunday while i was at the spanish ward. as i side note not only did i miss that at the english ward last sunday but i also missed seeing john heder (napolean dynamite), hyrum smith from the new joseph smith movie, an elder from best two years and someone else. they were all there for a baby blessing so all the elders at the english ward at the time got to meet all of them. i missed out haha i still have 2 years, although i know that im not here to see famous people haha
as i said earlier elder cooley and i have been blessed with a lot of teaching opportunies and we are going to baptize the familia chavez the sunday after next because they will be out of town this coming sunday. they have been to church with us 3-4 times and they are so nice! we also just found a new family and we are going back to teach them for the second time, but we have talked to them another two times but both times they couldnt have a lesson once because there parents werent home and once becuase it was the holidays... it was really weird the past two weeks but the schedule and everything is back to normal so thats great. they have a lot of potential! they are from mexico and are always really excited to talk to us and even said that they were eaiting for us to show up on christmas day at 7 ( we forgot when we set up the appointment that the friday we set it up for was christmas and that we had to be in by 6...) anyway we are teaching them tomorrow. we are teaching a few other people that are not super solid at the moment- we are trying to figure out how commited they are to the gospel.... ekder cooley and i dediced that teaching and baptizing families is a very very efficient way to preach the gospel... especially when they have like 40 relatives taht live in LA like the chavez do...!
on friday we had an amazing mission wide conference! it was the first and only of the year (well we thought that but president blackburn announced that we will have another one just before he leaves in june- but that one will be in the temple!) but anyway we watched part of this video, well documentary, about the historic stuff from the book of mormon (called the journey of faith) its really good- you would love it! but not so much the girls (its a little missionary/nerdyish haha) anyway after that the man who wrote a rough stone rolling (the book on joseph smith that i really want to read after the mission- appearantly he is pretty unbaised, because he is mormon, and lays down all the facts...) he is a professor of mormon stories at claremount so it was cool to hear about teaching the gospel instead of proselyting/teaching the gospel. we had a good question and answer session, he knows just about everything there is to know about joseph smith. it was really really cool especially in light of all the recent church publications/releases of a lot of the original copies of the book of mormon and other historic documents-like an account of the first vision written by joseph's own hand... (the one in JSH is believed to have been dictated by joseph but written by the first presidency... and those are the only two documents we have on that. i learned a lot of stuff! i have a lot of reading to do after the mission....!
as for my reading now (mom, you asked about that i think...): i am going to start the book of mormon in spanish and i have already started to read jesus the christ (in english haha) but so far i love that book! i am taking really good notes on it too. its very very informative!
so all in all i am learning a lot! but unlike most of the stuff i just talked about that i am going to learn after the mission- all this stuff now is to strengthen my testimony so i can bear it with more power and clarity to invite the spirit to do some major converting! i am quickly learning what they always said in the MTC/before the mission that its not the messenger but the message. we just have to be obedient, faithful and worthy of the spirit always and then the lord does the rest!
love you!
ps can you add these people to the forwarding list (they were my MTC teachers...) thanks!
vanceandrew2103@gmail.com
davidgarciamilla@gmail.com
darintjohnston@gmail.com
so yeah could you forward any particularly good emails to them? or all of them i dont really care, whatever is easier... thanks!
pps what are grandma and grandpa's email address? do they email?
