Well, I am still here.  But Elder Johnson went to Valles.  That is literally about as close as you can get to the sun.  It can get up to 60 degrees Celsius there.  That is 140 Fahrenheit.  And last year it did make it to 63.  So hot that your shoes can melt to the side walk and the doves fall down from the heavens.  I am pretty sure that Moses was in Valles when the Israelites ate all of their birds, until it came out of their noses.  I hope you got that scripture reference.

So the great news is that Elder Jones, the other Zone Leader is with me now. That is just going to make my whole life a ton more easier  (that is horrible English but I'll just leave it there).  We can talk about the Zone now without having to talk on really dinky little phones.  They call these dumb phones "cacahuates" or peanuts.  And sometimes it might be better to use a peanut to talk to someone.  It is going to be great and the whole zone is going to move like crazy now.  We have two ex-zone leaders as our new district leaders.  They are both about ready to go home but they are going to help us a ton to move forward in the work here in Ampliacion.  I'm really excited.

This week the two kids of Gonzalo, Antonio and Ivonne, both got baptized.  It was a very simple service. There were great talks, and great prayers.  The best part was that Gonzalo got to baptize his kids.  He did a great job when he finally found the right words.  There was a very strong spirit there.  I think that they are going to stay active their whole lives.  They are so excited and it is always just great to see the smiles on their faces when we talk to them.

Jose Mateo went to church yesterday.  We had some great lessons with Him this week. We taught the Restoration with questions and he got to his own testimony that Joseph Smith is a prophet.  And he believes that we are the only true church.  We are going to have to keep going so that he can learn everything he needs to know to be able to pass the baptismal interview.  Hopefully we can do it.  His day is the 21st of April.

Good News.  Federico from Hidalgo, the blind and partially handicapped man that got baptized has the Melchizedek priesthood.  He has passed the sacrament a few times and has hardly missed a week. And Lizbeth just had two of her cousins baptized.  They are my strongest converts and they are from my first area.

This week we focused a lot on questions.  And how to find the needs of the people that we are teaching.  We learned a lot and had a ton of really spiritual lessons.  One of the best was with a student of the Jehovah's Witnesses.  She didn't want anything to do with us.  But we started asking her questions to get to know her and to figure out why she needs the Gospel.  And when we figured out that she had some problems in her childhood that she couldn't get over we talked about how Christ could help her to get over those problems and to forgive and feel better.  And we related it to prophets.  Cuz without prophets we wouldn't know that.  We had her in the corner and she felt the spirit. And so she suddenly pulled out a ton of excuses and basically ran away.  It was great. 

We did that with so many people this week.  I can honestly say that it was one of my most spiritual weeks in the whole mission.  Elder Johnson and I got along great and we were able to teach really well together.  Questions taught, Jose Mateo and about 8 or 9 other people this week why they need the gospel and we brought them closer to making covenants with God.

I got to do a baptismal interview for two kids this week. And I talked to their mom to see why she doesn't go to church or read.  We were able to explain the difference between real intent and passive curiosity.  It was really cool cuz she really understood it.  I hope that I can do that now with Elder Jones and that we can have even more success now. We have a ton of people with potential and hopefully some of them can progress.

Keep praying for us.  We can feel the difference, and don't forget to pray for the speakers in conference, they can feel the difference.

I love you and hope you are all doing great.

Elder Brady Allred