Today it finally rained.  It has been cloudy for about 3 weeks straight, but it never wants to rain.  Today it finally let a little water go for about an hour.  It was great and everyone says that now it is going to start to cool down for Winter.  "Cool down" means about 75 degrees, but it's better than 100.

Alberto is doing great in stopping drinking.  He now is only drinking about 1 beer a day, sometimes less.  That's a lot better than the 15 that he drank before.  He started at 10 am before and now he just drinks one sometimes with dinner when it is really hot.  So we are getting there and we are really happy to see the changes that he is making.  I think the cigarette is going to be harder for him, but he's working on it.  We moved his baptism for October 14th, it's far away but that was the day that Alberto wanted because he beleives that he can be done overcoming his problems by that day.  Maria (his mom) is a great support and is helping him a ton.

We are also starting to teach Rebecca.  She is supposedly a member, but according to the church records she never got baptized.  Nobody has a picture, nor written in their journal, nor anything written about what day was the baptism or who was their.  So the good news for us is that we get to teach her again and baptize her.  She is 13 years old and so we are going to try to reactivate her whole family so that this time she can be sure to stay member.  We are planning to teach her everything because honestly she doesn't remember a thing, but we do have a date for the 23rd of September.

Today was super great because we got to play volleyball as a zone.  It's the first time that I've gotten to play since president Ramirez gave us permission.  It was super fun and I really hope that we get to do it again.

This week we are going to have some family nights with some different members, and we hope that they can turn out well so that we can get to know the family members and friends of some of the members of our ward.  Hopefully we can find some new people to teach that way.

We are working really well with the ward and we are also realizing that a lot of times the activities are very under-planned and that really the church meetings need a lot more direction.  But hopefully we can figure out how to do that.

It's great to hear that you are all getting back to school again.  Work hard and don't procrastinate.

I love you all,

Elder Allred