To tell the truth, all English sounds really weird right now.  It never sounds right.  But hopefully you can all understand me in what I will try to share today.

First off, thank you all for you support in the last year and a half.  It really makes a big difference to know that there are a lot of people at home praying for me always.  It helps a lot to know that.  Thank you.

This week was a lot better.

We had interviews with President and then we had a 5 zone conference.  What I did learn is that we should focus more on the Book of Mormon in our work.  It is a lot more powerful when we do that.  We have been sharing scriptures from the Book of Mormon in our street contacts.  It's interesting how the people react when we share another book that is not the Bible.  Sometimes they ask a lot of questions.   Like where does it come from?  Why we would ever use a book that is not the bible.  How they can get one  (that's one of my favorites).  We have found that when we talk about the Book of Mormon people are a lot more interested in our message and the offer to visit them seems more like an offer to explain why the Book of Mormon and what it contains!   It was pretty cool to work more with that book of Scripture.

As we have been talking more about the Book of Mormon it inspired me to read it more.  I flew through the war chapters and all of Helaman in less than a week.  If I keep that up then I should finish in about 3 weeks more.  It is a more united story when you read it all together, and some times you see patterns and doctrines that you would not see other wise.  I've even learned a bit about government and society.    Really if everybody would read the Book of Mormon and live the warnings that Mormon and then Moroni give us then we would not have the problems that we have.  Really they give a great warning for all of the things that are happening.  Secret Combinations are not good, and the only way to overcome them is with the Holy Ghost and the Book of Mormon open and in our hands everyday.

Talking about that.  Gonzalo does have a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon, and we made sure of that.  We talked to him and his two kids the other day and we asked them if they have been reading.  They have been but they haven't asked if it it was true.  So we read the talk from President Nelson from the conference.,  It was great and it taught them very well.  So then we invited Gonzalo to kneel down and ask God if the Book is true (it was something that President Nelson and Elder Clayton invited us to always do last year when they came, which will have been a year on Thursday, great experience).  When we did it the spirit came in really strong.  It was really peaceful there and Gonzalo said that he felt like the book was burning in his hands.  They KNOW now that the book is very true.  And his kids finally started reading it.

The good news is that Gonzalo did get baptized on Saturday.  He sacrificed a lot of his time for the baptismal service because it took a while to get started, but it all turned out well.  He has changed a lot and now he is a whole lot happier.  His kids accepted a baptismal date for the 17th of March, and now they have started reading the Book of Mormon too.  We shared the story of Enos last night telling them to be like him and to follow their dad in his righteous ways.  hopefully they do that.

Thank you for all of your help and support.  I love each of you.  Never forget to read the Book of Mormon, it is the key to a strong testimony.

Elder Brady Allred