Hola Familia!

He didn't have a lot of time to write last Monday and no pictures were sent.  He had some wonderful experiences tho.  His testimony continues to grow!!  I had to look up what the Holy Death Religion was.  I still don't know much about the religion but the statues ARE scary looking!  Good call on the blessings ;) Prayers to all those mentioned.

Enjoy!!


Hola Familia!

So I have super super duper short time to write because we have an activity in about an hour in Lindsey with our zone and a few other zones too. We're going to be playing basketball and football and doing other stuff at a place called McDermit in Lindsey, it's basically their recreational center. But how is everyone?? Another week just flown by right? This week has been hectic and busy. Elder Corona and I have been trying to organize so many things. Stake correlation, baptism records, other stuff past missionaries didn't do, a whole bunch of missionary stuff. It's been just a blast :). Thankfully it's all taken care of now and things are starting to come back to normal.

So the work in Tulare is doing great so far! It hasn't been like on fire or anything, but it's starting to become steady. I've heard stories in the past where it was great one year and then less busy the next, but it's just steady right now. What the bishopric and other ward councilmen have advised us to stay focused on recent converts and less actives still. Especially here in Tulare. Just a quick history background, there are about 41 baptisms that happened this past year and 27-30 of them haven't had new member lessons completed which isn't very good haha. So in Tulare we're at a point to focus ONLY on less actives and recent converts rather than our investigators. So all of the updates on how our investigators are doing will slowly start to become how our less actives and recent converts are doing. But we never know because usually we always find some pretty solid investigators and baptisms through our RC/LA's... We have about 4-5 investigators right now and 2 of them are solid. Yo. and K. (K. is Yo.'s son) are those two, and they've been coming to church numerous times. The only thing that's holding them back is Yo.'s boyfriend. She says she wants to wait for him to get back from Syria and that she doesn't feel like she's ready :/ as for K. he can be baptized but he has some social things (I can't be to explicit about them) but we're working gradually with them both. We still have G. and Ye, the two sisters. We've found out that G. might be a bit more solid than Ye. We finally contacted her this past week, and she told us that she was willing to hear the lessons and see what it's like. Her daughter J. is already baptized and G. has seen that she's always been a lot happier since then. She's got that influence!

There is one specific less active that could use your prayers. They're the M. family. Before Elder Corona and I came here the Father of the family used to be part of the Spanish branch presidency, or at least he helped conduct sacrament meetings. He was very strong and then I guess over time he just got anti'ed or fell away by things of the world. It was unfortunate for the branch because they were a very strong family and they were married in the temple and everything, and for some odd reason. I'm not sure exactly why he fell away but I've heard it was some things to do with the Restoration of the Church. I don't know, but we could use your prayers on their behalf because they're a great family... There are other RC/LA's of course, as I've already mentioned, but little by little they're coming back. We've got one that came back to church yesterday after he relapsed back into smoking after his baptism. His name is F. and he's a great kid, just has the wrong friends. But he hasn't smoked in 4-5 days or so since we've talked to him?? He's doing great!!

This week had a few cool/crazy events that happened. Elder Corona and I on Saturday went to a recent converts house to throw out her holy dead statue. Before she was baptized she used to be part of a holy dead religion and she asked us to throw it out for her because she was scared to do it. We threw it out in her back yard and her boyfriend lit it on fire haha, and then she asked us for a blessing after so that she could feel better, or so that she could feel comfortable in her house again and then we gave a blessing on the house. She felt a lot better :). Shortly after Sister Niumatalolo and Taula called us and asked us to go and give a blessing to one of their members, for Sister Taula, AND for the members home. So we went over there and gave them blessings and right about when we finished it was the end of the day. So it was a sweet day to end the day right? :) God needed us in different places at different times for the power of the PRIESTHOOD! It was definitely another testimony builder that God guides us and the Priesthood is real.

Because my time is short I'm gonna have to leave soon, I want to wish a everyone a great week! Know how much I love ya, and that I'm praying for you all the time! I'll print off your letters and read them later. Sorry this had to be super short!

Love, Elder Al