Early PDay

Derek wrote early (May 18), but I'm even later getting it up here.

"Yep, I'm writing early, p-day is one day earlier this week... We were going to go to a baseball game today as a mission, so they switched the p-day. Unfortunately, it's been raining here for the past three days so it was canceled... Ah well, we'll go to one in the future!

As for things going on this week, it wasn't too great of a week in terms of teaching, unfortunately. But we did have some cool things happen! First of all would probably be this guy we've been trying to work with, that has the blessing of having Sundays off from work but works like crazy during the rest of the week. He hasn't come to church for two months, so we'll go by trying to drop him, but each time he's said I'll be there this week. Finally we haven't been talking to him for the last two weeks, and miracle of miracles he was at church this week! It was awesome to see him there, haha I was super happy and surprised, hopefully now he decides to keep coming!

We also have two baptismal dates!! Unfortunately, they're after transfers, so we'll see if I'm still around for them, hopefully so! We have one girl [who is] a fifth grader that is incredibly spiritual. A few weeks ago we just had a door step lesson with her about the Book of Mormon and prayer. She prayed for the first time, and from there has prayed every morning and night. It's been cool to see her change as more and more of the gospel has come into her life, and you can see that she has more peace and happiness despite all the horrible things that happen around her. Unfortunately the father is an alcoholic and often drunk and doesn't want her to come to church, so we'll be praying for a miracle there. Still, it's been cool to see her gain hope and trust in her Father in Heaven.

Then we have a guy... I think I've told you about him before, [who's] had a tough life, and we've been teaching him these last two transfers. Unfortunately he couldn't get baptized before because he's not married to his girlfriend [and is living with her], but luckily for his eternal salvation, sad for his temporal, she's going to Honduras for a year at the end of this month! We had a really cool lesson with him in the Visitors Center this past Sunday where we spoke about the plan of salvation and eternal marriage. Both he and his girlfriend have strong desires to one day enter the temple and be married for all eternity, and Dennis himself pointed out that before that could happen he had to get baptized. The spirit was strong as it always is so close to the temple, and we invited him to be baptized on the 29th of May,... he accepted and said he really felt at peace with the decision. haha needless to say I was incredibly happy! It's been cool to see him change as he's come to know God more and rely on him to get him through his trials in life. It's been cool to see how their relationship has changed as they've involved God in it, and committed to living the law of chastity... They've grown a lot, and I'm excited to hopefully one day see him enter into the temple!

Those were definitely the highlights of the week. There was also another interesting thing that happened. Do you guys remember me telling you guys about a guy... that had a really tough life, I met him probably my second or third week here? He's the one that walked away and I wish I would've called him back to talk to him. Well, it truly was a miracle but we found him again. We were biking past some buildings and we found him sitting by the side of one drunk. I was surprised I still recognized him, but we stopped and talked to him, and this time I feel like we did what we could for him. He wouldn't give us an address, but we have his phone number and we left him with a book of Mormon that I wrote my testimony in. I now feel like we've given him as much of a chance as we could have. I really hope he reads the Book of Mormon and hopefully can come to know of its truthfulness. He needs the gospel, but he can't seem to see it, probably doesn't help that he's almost in a permanent drunken state it seems. Though we did get him to throw away his bottle of alcohol he had with him! Still, he needs the atonement, hopefully he can decide to use it...

Other than that, that's about it for the week. It went by far faster than any week I've had so far. It really feels like I just wrote you guys yesterday. Sheesh, too fast! Last week of the transfers though, hopefully we can do well! I really feel like I'm going to be transferred though, not sure why, but I guess we'll see!"