Hello Family,
This past week has been pretty good out here in Texas, with not too much going on. There are a few cool stories I can tell, most of which are about Hector. I also put a picture of him in this email so you can see him. I sent a picture of me and my companion Elder Navarro since I believe I've neglected to do that, as well as a picture of my tie rack with the spoils from my first tie dig. I did receive Mom's Halloween package, for which I was very excited. The Texas shirt is nice and the candy was speedily consumed. However, I did not get the idea about cutting the caramel apples into wedges, rather I just spent a good half hour washing caramel off of my hands.
We've been losing quite a few of our investigators this week. They slowly fall off for various reasons, but so far we've got two that are pulling through. Hector is the first one, and everything is going well with him. The second is Cindy. She is a 30 or so year old lady who is divorced and has two kids. So far she seems really interested in our message. her two children are named Cleopatra and Cesar which I think is a funny combination of names to give to your kids. They're both good kids and we've had the chance to talk with them a little bit.
Hector surprised both me and my companion this week when we went over for an appointment. He took us into his room to ask for some advice and showed us the white shirt, suit and tie he bought because he wanted to really fit in at Church. The only problem was, he didn't know how to tie a tie. So, abandoning a little part of our lesson, I spent a few minutes teaching him how to tie his tie. I put in a picture of that, which ended up being a pretty funny experience. I had to try to explain it in Spanish, having no knowledge of the vocab that one would normally use to explain something like that. The next day we went and got a bunch of the good leftover ties from our tie bale and brought them over to Hector. Now he has everything he needs to look just like a missionary at church. Many of the members actually mistook him for an Elder on Sunday until they realized he didn't have a plaque on.
The other interesting story that happened with hector this week is that during church, the Bishop called him out of the class just to talk to him for a bit and get to know him better. During the course of the conversation, the Bishop asked Hector when his baptismal date was. We had been asking him about his baptism, but not specifically the date of the baptism. So, he could only respond to the Bishop with, "I'm not sure." So after his conversation, he came over to me and Elder Navarro and asked us when his baptismal date was. I told him it was the 14th of November, but of course only if that was what he wanted. At which point he looked at me and said, "Oh yes, of course I want to." After having so many baptismal dates drop through and having trouble finding people, it's really uplifting to see someone who the Lord has truly prepared making their way into His church.
Everything is gong well out here, and transfers happened this last Tuesday. I'm staying in Donna for another six weeks at least, and we had two new elders and one new Sister come into the Weslaco District here. One of them is a fluent Spanish speaker, so it'll be great to receive advice and help from him. The Sister tat came in is actually one of the missionaries from my district in the MTC. So some changes went through. Overall, I think that they're really going to help our area progress and bring more people into the Church.
Love,
Elder Wood
