March 7, 2010

Hey family,
So for those of you who don`t speak Spanish, the title of my e-mail says, "Ha ha, I stay one more transfer." I was informed on Saturday night that I will be staying in Porvenir for a 5th transfer. Which in real person language means up until 7 months. (My mind works in transfers.) I will be in my first area up until the 9 month mark of my mission (because I was in the MTC for 2 months). And after that its almost certain that I will be going home. Because my companion finishes his mission at the end of the next transfer (one more with me, one more with someone else). They usually don`t have two missionaries leave a sector at the same time, so if I stay one more, Ill stay two more which would leave me here 7 transfers or until July. Not likely.

I`m glad to hear that everyone has finished the sports pretty well. And it sounds like everyone had a pretty fun time in their basketball this year. For Adam, I would talk to Adam about whether or not he wants to keep playing the recreational basketball. Recreational basketball will give him more experience than church ball I think, so if he is interested in play High School ball staying in recreational might be better for him, even if he can`t go to the practices, the competition is a little better. Or at least as far as I have seen. I probably don`t have any idea what Im talking about. While we are talking about basketball, do you happen to know the name of the BYU player who isn`t playing anymore. Just curious. And I am really glad the Aggies keep winning. Hopefully they will get out of the first round of the tournament this year. (I know, first they have to make the tournament).

Here in Perù, everything is going pretty well. We have been working really hard to invite people to be baptized, because we have lots of people who just need a little bit of a push to come to church and be baptized. We also finally had the opportunity to talk to Fernando`s mom about being baptized. She told us no, but she said we could come back and talk to her another day, so hopefully she can find the gospel herself and they can both get baptized. Fernando is ready. Lately he has come to chruch in slacks and a tie, and Sunday he came in a suit. Frankly he was dressed better than anyone in the church Sunday, including the missionaries. It was pretty awesome. He has been waiting 2 years to be baptized, and I hope he won`t have to wait 1 year more. I also think its better anyway if his mom is okay with it.

We also had an activity yesterday that was pretty awesome. Remember the activity we had 4 of the 6 saturdays when I was in the CCM? The missionaries came to my ward for this activity. We had 20 missionaries knocking doors all day Saturday, so we have a ton of references to look for from them. It is going to be awesome. And one of the people taught by them came to church yesterday too. I also ran into a few Elders from Utah, one from Layton, and one from Bountiful. The Elder from Bountiful is named Elder Child, and when I got talking to him, he told me that he was related to Child`s in Syracuse. Im not sure if it is the same family of Child`s that we know, but was pretty cool. Turns out he also knows Spencer Cook, who I know really well, so we had something to talk about for the few minutes of rest that we had.

Im glad to hear everything is going well. I hope the work continues to progress in Maryland. I love hearing about the baptisms that are happening there. I have found more and more faith in Christ every day of my mission and we hope to be able to continue to feel his love. We learned about charity today in our Zone Meeting, which was awesome! We have to have charity to be successful and we read a few scriptures about charity. One of my favorites is Moroni 7:44-48. It talks about why charity is important and what exactly is charity. I love you all. I hope the next week will be amazing, and you will have a few opportunities to do missionary work. The Book of Mormon is true, it testifies of Christ. Jesus Christ is our Savior and our Redeemer. He knows us better than we know ourselves and he loves us. He loves us so much that he gave the perfect example of love (John 15:13) We always need to strive to be more like him. Never, never, never forget about his love and never stop pushing forward in this live and remember that we need to Endure to the End.

Tyler