Surprise!

Surprise Family!

I get to write to you again today.  Saturday is only the P-day for the office.  Everywhere else in the mission it is on Monday.  Well, we have not heard back from the mission president yet, so it looks like we may be staying in our same sector for the next two weeks until the whole mission does transfers.  I think I like it this way because I will be able to stay with some of the families that we started teaching when I got here. 

Back: Elder Heaps, Ucler Zambrano, Xavier, Elder Caro;
 Front: Elder Barboza, Luna

There is one family, the Zambranos, with whom we have worked with the most.  Some of the little girls are members, but the parents are not.  We have been teaching the father, Ucler, and one of the daughter’s boyfriends, Xavier.  Ucler has already stopped drinking after two lessons.  I was surprised by how willing he was to start making the changes necessary to prepare for baptism.  We got them both to come to the activity on Saturday, church on Sunday, and a baptism later that night.  I have not been able to talk to them since, but they seemed to like it.  (We have six missionaries working in our sector right now, so we share a lot of our investigators)  It was ward conference, so they had a member do a special musical number on the violin.  He came back for the baptism and to accompany us as we all sang along.  The singing was almost on key, too. 

Anyway, I think they liked the music a lot.  The activity was a lot of fun.  For the Relief Society’s (women’s organization) number, they all stuffed pillows down the back of their shirts, like they had osteoporosis, and hobbled out onto the stage with canes and crutches.  They turned the music on, and they flung their canes off and started their merengue number.  It was pretty hilarious.

P-day hike overlooking airport with Office
(Elders Johnson and Mendez, Zone Leaders)

Well, I way lucked out on my companion.  We have a lot of missionaries pass through the office, and they have all told me I really am blessed to be able to have such a good trainer.  I look forward to learning a lot from him.  He really has a special way of winning the confidence of the people we teach.  He is a very caring person.  When he first made me some mate, he dumped a quart of sugar into it to try and mask the general taste of grass.  He’s going to slowly wean me off the sugar.  He makes us some mate for every companionship study.  It’s not too bad.  He is really good with both investigators and ward members.  Most families here do Family Home Evening on different days besides Monday, so we have been able to do a few family nights with them.  One family has three sons that we take out tracting almost every day.  They have been quite helpful.  I have enjoyed stepping back and looking at the range of families in this area.  There are one or two families that have had the gospel for a few years now, and it is great to think that the families we are teaching now might be as happy and blessed as these families in a few short years.

Well, how are things back home?  Is school still going well for everyone?  There was one girl I tried to help with her math homework here.  It was pretty fun trying to figure out what all the different math words were.  We’ll talk to you all next Monday.  Next week I’ll take my camera and see if I can send you some pictures.  Love you all,

Elder Ludlam