November 15, 2010
Hey family,Glad to hear that everything is still going reasonably well inMaryland, and that Mom is getting a break from driving everyone allover Maryland for their different activities. Im glad to hear thatthe Stake Conference was good and that you got a great experience outof it. And Im glad that Dad at least stayed awake while Mom was atthe pulpit. Sounds like you had another experience of the "Who arethese weird people buying all the food in the store?" Isn`t foodstorage great? By the way, I got the pictures that you sent. Thanks. Its good tohave a real picture of all my siblings and not just papers. Peoplelike seeing pictures of our family here, and its great because for alot of people in Perù, families are really important. This week was pretty slow work-wise and pretty fast time-wise, westill don`t have any investigators progressing, but this week wefocused on getting new investigators and got 6 new investigators thispast week and have appointments with six more people this coming weekwho could be new investigators. Of our 6 new investigators only 1seems like she will progress pretty rapidly. Her name is Charo. Itwas great because when we contacted her at her house she respondedwith the phrase I hear everyday... "Soy Catolica", meaning... "I`mCatholic" which usually means we won`t get anywhere, but when we cameback and taught the first lesson she was really interested and when wetalked about the Great Apostacy and the need for a restoration sheagreed and then when we talked about Joseph Smith she was interested.Charo was also interesting because someone else told her we didn`tbelieve in the virgen Mary. And when we explained we do believe shewas the mother of Christ and an incredible person but we don`t worshipher because we only worship God and Jesus Christ, Charo was a lot moreopen to us. Our other interesting new investigator is Antonio. He is more than 80years old and kind of... strange... For example, when we contactedhim, he said that we needed to come back in the morning, because itsbetter to talk about Jesus Christ in the morning, and he also said weneeded to learn to say thank you in more languages and that Spanishand English aren`t pretty enough. He said we needed Russian andGerman and French. He also thinks Portuguese isn`t pretty enough. :)But he listens and although it will be slow we think he mightprogress. About the title...We got a call from President Tyler Saturday night and he told us thathe and Hermana Tyler were coming to visit our ward on Sunday...Needless to say we were worried about having investigators there.Especially because we had been told by Milagros, Leidy, and a fewothers that they couldn`t come... However,Sunday was awesome! We had 7 investigators in the church... Granted,only 2 are our investigators right now but the members are workinghard too. David Robles brought his 2 children from his first marraigeand another person brought his neice. David`s children don`t live inmy mission, but they were pretty interested too. Fernando andElizabeth came on Sunday as well. They were our 2 investigators.Neither can progress... Elizabeth needs to be married and her "pareja"(person she isn`t married to, but lives with and has had a child with)doesn`t want to be married so we are still working on him. Fernandoneeds permission from his parents before he can be baptized. Itstough but Im glad to see they are coming to church. It shows theirdesire for progression even if those around them are making itdifficult.Its a little sad because we have to move Milagros` baptism backanother week, but we are going to work on her more this week and tryand help her come to church. She has a class from 9 to 1 on Sundayswhich is making it difficult for us. My scripture of the week is Luke 5:12-13... This scripture is about aleper who when asking to be healed and said to Christ: "Lord, ifthough wilt, thou canst make me clean." This man had no doubt thatJesus Christ could heal him. His question wasn`t "Can you?" hisquestion was "Will you?" He knew that Christ could heal him, but heknew it had to be the will of Christ to heal him. This was anincredible show of faith, and humility. He was submitting himself tothe will of Christ. All of us need this same humility. I hope everything continues to go well at home and you are succesfulin work and school. I love you all. The church is true. Keepstudying the scriptures and learning the gospel.Love,Tyler