Pretty Good Week

Dear Family,

How are you all this week?  This week has been pretty good for us.  We have started teaching the oldest daughter of a part member family.  She has recently moved back in with her parents.  When the home teachers came over to talk with her family, she asked for them to send us to talk with her.  She had never read the Book of Mormon, but has heard a lot of rumors about the church and decided the best way to find out about the church was reading the Book of Mormon.  She found by herself in Moroni 8 and said she really liked it, which is a response we don’t hear very often in a country in which 98% of the population is Catholic.  Most people have found that Mormon uses some strong language. 

Anyways, she has picked up the information really quickly.  The only problem is that she has already told us that she received a spiritual confirmation to her prayer, but is still a little unsure if she wants to join the church yet.  She has studied with several different religions, which is good because she has been able to see the crystal clarity in which the Book of Mormon lays out many of the most highly debated topics in the Christian theological world, but it is bad because she is having a little trouble renouncing old ideas.  We have our next lesson on Tuesday.

We are also working with another gentleman who has had several head injuries but has been interested in what we teach him.  If we talk about a subject that is familiar to him, he is usually able to hold a completely coherent conversation, but sometimes we have to put our lessons on hold for a moment or two because we realize he is staring blankly into our foreheads.  He is easy to get a hold of, so we have been able to work with him a lot.  He works on shipping boats, so we don’t know if he may leave soon.

Those are our two main investigators for the moment. 

We didn’t get permission to go to Malecon.  Maybe next week.  I guess you saw in the last pictures I sent that Elder Garcia’s camera has the same purple problem as mine.  We have similar Canon models.  I am afraid my camera has finally expired.  It has come back from the dead a few times, but I don’t have much hope for it this time.  I might give it to someone to see if they can do anything.

Well, I’ll talk to you soon.  I was very pleased to hear about your ninja adventures at camp mom.  I hope you were able to let all your giggles out.  I am sure glad to hear you’ve started biking to work, Dad.  Every now and then I get the ganas to get on a bike and ride around.

Sincerely yours,

Mr. Squiliam G. Sledgeham, esq.

Feely:  I am having Peru problems.  I guess you know that Peruvians and Ecuadorians don't like each other at all.  I am afraid that my relationship with my companion is deteriorating lately.  I have been ignoring most of what he says because everything is either comment about how terrible our ward and Bishop are or he is making fun of the mentally handicapped young man that likes to follow us around or how things would be different if we were in Lima.   I am still looking for a good way to broach the subject and ask him if he could please be a little less discriminatory and biased.

This has actually been one of my favorite wards.  I tried asking Elder Sanchez to be a little less prideful, and it did not go over too well.  "How dare you?  What have I ever done that could possibly have been taken as prideful?"  I have realized making petitions like these are like explaining to a blind man what the color red is.  Any how, things are actually going pretty well between us.  I have found that buying food, shining shoes and cleaning up the house every once in a while is enough to make just about any companionship with a latino work as long as they don't have a pre-existing vendetta against you.