Happy New Year! Abilene week 29

Happy New Year from Abilene!

New years eve wasn't too different than a normal day. We had to come in at 6. Unfortunately, we weren't told that until that very morning so we had to cancel 2 appointments that night. But we were able to reschedule with those people, and we ended up having a fun night. In preparation for New Years Eve on p day we had bought some Martenellis (although we couldn´t find any for real, so we bought Welch).

And we also purchased pretzels, caramel and chocolate. We had a good time melting up some chocolate and caramel and covering some pretzels with real delicousness.

This week we had some pretty crazy stuff go down. I´ll start with Nancy and Gricelda. We had a baptismal date set with Nancy and then on Tuesday we had planned to set one with Gricelda as well when we went over for our lesson on Wednesday. When we showed up at the members house they are living at, he came out and told us that the day before they had packed up and moved to Mexico. They said it was a completely spur of the moment thing. They just came in, packed their bags and left. Their parents live in Mexico. They called them up and said they found jobs for them down there, so they left right away. Wow. We lost our most legit investigators to Mexico once again...

This week was still a good one despite our many setbacks that we faced. I got a picture of Lupe and Genaro after one of our lessons this week. Sorry it´s a little blurry. Btw, the other Elder there is Elder Banegas. He is fresh from the MTC in Mexico. The zone leaders are training him, but he came with us a couple days this week. This week was a huge one with Lupe and Genaro. After they loved the restoration they asked us, "What are some of the dos and don´ts?" Well, we gave them the Word of Wisdom. Lupe drank tea and Genaro drank coffee. But, we just laid it all out on the table. Lupe said, "Ahhhhhhhhhh. Tea? Well, I love tea, but I love God more!" They both are now living the word of wisdom 100%! They know it´s all true! They both came to church this week. Afterward, we were talking to Genaro and he said, "I like it. My wife liked it. We´ll be back next week. I just felt really good. Relaxed. Peacful." We told him that was the Spirit he was feeling. and he said, "It is?" I believe that we have been guided in all our words during our lessons with them. It turns out, our ward mission leader used to go fishing with Genaro back in the 80s, so that was a really cool coincidence. I tell ya, all the hispanics know each other one way or another. Basically, if you haven´t already garnered this from what I have said, Lupe and Genaro are super awesome. We set a baptismal date with them for the 25th of January, but we are going to try and move it up to the 18th this week.

Damian and Sofia: They were not able to make it to church yesterday. Damian had to work aaaaaallllll day. We drove by his house just before 7 to see if we could meet with him last night, and he was still at work. So the good news is that he´s not coming because he is working, not because he doesn´t want to. We were able to have a really good lesson with them this week. And hopefully this coming week we can reset a baptismal date with the both of them.

We picked up a new investigator up in Anson (a city about 20 miles out of Abilene) this week. My whole time here I have never been to the outlying cities, but we decided to go this week. There were supposedly a few members and former investigators that lived up there. We went to where a member was supposed to live. She didn´t live there. But a guy who spoke Spanish lived there and he let us right in. His name is Cipriano and he loved the restoration too! He said he wanted to be baptized. We haven´t seen him since that one lesson mid week. But this week we plan on going up there at least once to follow up.

No news with any other investigators this week. Church attendance was in the 30s I would say. Just for your information, about half of our lessons are actually in Spanish. Nancy and Gricelda were always English. Lupe and Genaro are a mix. Damian and Sofia are pure Spanish. We teach a good mix of both English and Spanish. But I prefer Spanish :)

Well, I want to tell you a couple funny short stories this week: Yesterday we went up to knock a door and found a Jehovah´s Witness card on someone´s door. Before we knocked I took it down. We knocked. No one answered. Then we put up one of our own pass along cards on the door! I thought it was funny. The other story has to do with our pass along cards too. We knocked on a door. A guy answers and tells us that he is Catholic pointing to a picture of the Pope on his door. I said, oh I didn´t know. I pointed to the picture of Jesus Christ that was a pass along card from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and told him it was from our church. He was pretty flabbergasted after that one. Anyway, I hope those stories were entertaining. I love you mom! I love you dad! I love you Meagan! I love you Courtney!