Dear Family,
Well, this week turned out
to be a pretty good week as well. We're seeing some good things happen
here in Corpus Christi. We've seen progress since we got here two
weeks ago. I have a bunch of pictures from Brownsville that I was going
to try and send home, but it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to
since my companion's card reader is freaking out. Oh well.
To answer Mom's question, my companion is Elder
Mejia. He's from Mesa, AZ, and has been out in the mission for about 6
months. He's a native Spanish speaker, not that we use the Spanish much
up here in Corpus, but it's still nice. He's definitely an interesting
guy. We've been getting along so far, but he's different than any
other companion I've had, that's for sure.
I went on exchanges this week with the other Elders
that live with us. We were on exchanges for just two days, but we had a
couple pretty cool experiences. The coolest experience was probably
when we met Maria Chavez. We were walking down this one neighborhood
and we got to a crossroads. We were unsure of where we were supposed
to go. So we stopped by the intersection and said a prayer, asking which
way the Lord wanted us to go. After saying the prayer we pondered for a
little bit and then I felt impressed that we should continue straight.
We did and went our way knocking down the street. Few doors were answered,
and those that did didn't seem too open. But, as we walked down the
street there was a lady who was walking her dog. We stopped and talked
to her and she seemed fairly open to us. After talking to her for a
while and asking her some questions we finally figured out that she's
actually a member of the church who was baptized when she was a teenager
because her friend had brought her to Mutual. She hadn't been
to church in over 20 years because her friend had moved away and she had
gone inactive. We testified of the experience that we had with prayer, and she opened up to us and said that she had been thinking
about the church for a long time and wanted to come back. She just
wanted to come back, be active and be forgiven for the things that had
happened in the past 20 years. The next day she came to the ward
potluck activity. It was funny because she came in and said "Oohh, I
hope I see someone I know." Then when she went to the table to get some
food a lady about her age stared at her for a couple seconds and then
said, "...Maria Chavez?? Girl I haven't seen you in years!" And then
they both laughed, starting talking, sat next to each other and it
seemed like she had a great time.
The other cool thing that happened actually occurred
at that same ward potluck. There's a member in our area named Henry
Ingram. He's retired, but he used to be a judge in the valley. I'm
pretty sure he's the most missionary minded member I've met in my whole
mission. Since I've been here, he's invited us over to teach 3 people
at his house, brought 2 to the potluck activity and one to church, and
we have appointments to teach two of those people this week. (One of the
people that went to the potluck activity also was the one that came to
church). Basically the guy is on fire. The lady he brought to the
potluck is some lady from Romania who has two TV shows here in Corpus,
so it was kind of a big deal. She came to church and we're set up to
teach her on Tuesday. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Sunday was a pretty great experience as well. Both
wards had all three of the new missionaries speak in Sacrament meeting. In the English ward we were asked to teach the third hour class. We
read parts of the talk by Henry B. Eyring titled, "Let Us Raise Our
Voice Of Warning", which is one I highly reccomend, and then
brainstormed ideas as to how we could help others hear the gospel. I think it
went pretty well and we got the members excited. An active
member that had previously been discouraged with her missionary efforts
and didn't really want to continue told us after that she's going to
invite 10 families to her house for a discussion in two weeks and that
we'll come to teach them. Seeing fruits of your efforts is always nice,
isn't it?
Anyway, we're having a great time here up in
Corpus. Today for P-Day we're going to the aquarium and maybe to go
visit the Lexington. Hopefully, I'll come back with some good pictures.
I'm glad to hear that James is doing better. It's
good to know that God's helping the doctors to know what the heck
they're doing.
The computers here at the
church have a filter on blogs, so I can't see the family blog anymore,
so if someone could email me a picture of Michael that'd be great =)
I love you so much, take care!
