More Photos!

That´s kinda cool to hear that the son of Elder Pino lives in our ward.  When I shook hands with Elder Pino he asked where I´m from. I said Utah. He said What part?, close to Salt Lake, what part? South Jordan.  They told me that they had just visited their son who lives in South Jordan and that he had just moved and that he was impressed by how much it is growing out there.  I thought that maybe it was Daybreak but I didn't think that it would actually be our ward. That's honestly pretty cool.

This week was pretty great.  We worked quite a bit with members and I say that we did have success.  We had more that 50 people in church on Sunday for the first time in 3 months.  We don't know exactly how many but my estimated count at the end of the Sacrament was the number that they used.  We may have been even closer to 60 but I was the only one who even tried to count.  Old habits die hard.

We also had 7 investigators come to church yesterday.  That's two families.  We are supper excited and we do think that they have a lot of potential to be able to progress.  A lo mejor [best case scenario] we have 4 baptisms in June if we can get the one sister married.

So the two families are Perla and her 2 kids Paco (11) and Paula (5); and the other one is Carolina and her 3 kids.  Aldo-10, Naomi-4 and Hiram-3.  I'll talk first about Perla.  She is doing well and is starting to read the Book of Mormon more.  She is catholic but she has backed away from the church a lot and is fighting against the pull of her mom.  She told us when we started that we couldn't invite her to baptism but I think that she's ready to accept now. She didn't want pressure but since she came to church the first time she seems to be a lot more motivated from inside. And she asks a lot of really good questions.  She is ready to change her life and we hope that tomorrow she accepts a baptismal date for June.  She is a teacher too and so that helps me relate a little more with her because she works in a "middle school" basically.  But she's really great.  We just have to divorce her spouse so that they can get married and that will be the biggest challenge that we will have.

The other family, Carolina, also asks a lot of questions.  Her oldest son Aldo asks a ton of questions and he actually answers the questions and looks up the scriptures and the end of the Pamphlets that we use.  That's a first.  But he learns really fast and I think that he is motivating his mom to do the readings too.  She is a single mother, but only because her husband is with another person.  They do struggle a bit with money but they keep going. We are looking for a house with cheep rent so that they can go there.  Their two youngest children are full of energy and it is literally impossible to help them focus.  They don't leave us alone and are always digging through our backpacks.  We have tried taking balloons, the coloring book, and just about everything else that we can think of.  Today we are going to bring an elderly couple that always wants to help us and maybe with two  more sets of hands we can keep everything under control.

So I finally came up with some ideas for how to teach some lessons in a more easy way to understand. One was a really hard puzzle that we made representing the apostasy when the church fell apart and that it is really hard to put back together without a guide.  Then we give them the picture and my companion or I help them to reassemble the Gospel.  It worked really well and the family really understood well.

Another idea was with the balloons.  We wrote the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the balloon.  And then when God revealed the Gospel to Adam we filled the balloon and then put a clip on the blow hole that was labeled prophets to represent that prophets maintain the Gospel.  Then when the people rejected the gospel we took away the prophets and it got smaller.  It did leave some writings (the Bible) but it wasn't complete.  Then Moses filled the balloon.  And then Christ filled it anew when he came.  And he tied a knot with his 12 apostles.  But the people rejected the Apostles and popped the balloon.  And then it fell apart in small pieces, representing the many churches that formed as a result.  Each one with a part of the truth but not all of it.  And the only way to have a full balloon again is to get a new balloon and restore the Gospel.  So God pulled out a perfect balloon full of the Gospel known as the Book of Mormon.  And it will not pop again.  It was really great and I feel like I had a bit of heavenly intervention to come up with that idea.

We also discovered that when you put a marble in the balloon (it doesn't matter how full) and you drop it, the balloon almost always breaks.  Representing that even sins that seem to be really small can destroy us.

But up to now that's about all I've got besides the good old bleach and food coloring.

We are starting to find more people and we are going to now work more with references to find better people more easily.  We are also staring to have more support from the branch and hopefully we will have a lot of success.

But that's about it for this week. We are going to redouble our efforts this week and we hope to be able to have some baptisms in June and find people for July.  We are excited.

I love you and I love to hear from you.  Have a great week and don't forget to do Family History work and go to the temple and read the book of Mormon individually and as a family all summer long.