09/19/2011

Hola Familia, Sometimes I start writing these letters in Spanish and then I have to start writing the letter all over again, ha ha. But we are doing great this week! The baptism went awesome, but also went a little bit rough. But the good thing was that I felt confident that the baptism went the way that our Savior would have wanted it to go. First of all we were scheduled to baptize hermana Virginia with her son Saturday, but only she showed up. Her son went to work and said twenty minutes more to his mom and he would come home fast. But he never came home. So she looked pretty sad. She told us she wouldn't let it get her down and that she is giving her life to the Lord now. That was pretty awesome to hear that. I was privileged to baptize her and the baptism went smoothly. I didn't have to do it twice. Let's hope I can continue to only have to do it once. But I felt badly. My comp was gonna baptize her son and was all in white, but he never came. I'm sure things will still work out with him. He is probably just scared of something. We will try to find out what it is and help him overcome what ever problem that he has. He got home and he won't be able to leave his house much so we will be able to teach him more this week. But what was awesome is that her husband and her 3 other kids came to the baptism. Now the kids want to be baptized also. So they have baptismal dates( Marie 15 years old, Enrique who is 11, and Gabriela who is 9) for the 8th of October because the next two Sundays are conferences. District and then General. So we will have to work hard with them and help the dad to gain the desire to be baptized too. Presidente Calderon will be coming to Riberalta the end of this week and probably spend a week here. That's good because it has been almost two transfers since we've seen him. It should be a good week with him. We are working hard still and I'm pretty healthy. I just have a cold. We have a bunch of good investigators right now. Remember the family who gave us turtle to eat? Two of their three daughters came to church with this girl that helps them out around the house. They seemed to enjoy it and they also made some friends. They stayed the whole three hours, which was also way cool. I hope next week they will all be able to go to church together again. But it was crazy yesterday in church. It started to rain way hard and no one was willng to leave. They only have motorcycles so they won't leave in the rain. It rained so hard and the gutters were full. Four feet of water runnin like a river. They said that this was nothing. During the rainy season, it does this 3 to 4 time a day and almost every day, haha. So I guess I just got put here in the dry and hot season. I would love to see the rainy season too, but I guess I will see how long they keep me here. We had an awesome lesson yesterday when we were contacting. I contacted this girl and she said, "oh do you want to come in?" I said sure so I had to call my companion who was contacting someone else. We went in and taught. When we were ending before we could ask, she said, "well, when will you guys be passing by here again?" ha ha. I told her we could come whenever she wanted us to. We made an appointment with her and then she asked, "oh and next lesson could you prepare something from your church?" We said of course. This visit we just got to know her and talked about her dreams, struggles, and what she wants in her life. She is awesome and is gonna invite her boyfriend to our next lesson. She also said she will go to church. Well, things are going good. I'm learning alot and my Spanish is still improving. I feel like I am still progressing a lot every week. I realized it's important to work hard and do all you can for the people. Then put your confidnence in the Lord and he will always guide you to what will bring the most happiness. It's crazy, a lot of the time, there is a lot of things that will put you down. But now they don't put me down too much. I put all my confidence in the Lord and when I pray about why things happened the way did and why things aren't working so well, I feel His love so strongly in my heart that it burns. You can know for sure that you're doing what He wants. Thanks so much for all your love and support. You guys mean so much. Love, Elder Christoffersen