Dear mom,
This week was awesome! We got a pretty big teaching group of people who are all really good people and we made a goal to baptize 8 people this month, which is for sure gonna happen! (see dads email for a description of the people and the plan) but we’ve been having lots of miracles and I think after this month the ward here is gonna be super excited about mission work cause they’re gonna be getting a lot of new members that they’re gonna have to help with! This month is gonna be sweet here!
It’s sad to hear about umbra :( you gave such a detailed description that I could see it all happening! Sad stuff... In gonna miss that cat. Hopefully he´ll be there in heaven when we get there. And Frankie too.
Sounds like the temple day was super awesome. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the temple. I hope I get to go sometime soon, but I think that I’m gonna be in this area for at least one more transfer which means like two and a half more months. Which isn’t bad because this area feels like home now and it’s gonna be sad to leave it someday. I for sure want to come back after my mission and visit all the people that I am meeting and working with here. I for sure love this place.
It sounds like everything is good at home and starting to settle down a bit. Good to know they didn’t get a super high maintenance baby. Haha. Anyway sounds like life is good there and I hope it keeps being good! Life is for sure good here and only getting better!
Love,
Elder Raleigh
Dear dad,
This week was super awesome! We made a goal to baptize 8 people this month and I think it might happen. We already had 4 people who were on track to be baptized when we made the goal and now we have 4 more that are a good potential! We have Reginaldo and Adriana, Felipe, and Anna who are all pretty much guaranteed and then at church this Sunday this women who has been a little less active showed up and she had two kids that are 9 and 11 that she wants to be baptized this month so that’s 6! And then last night we went and visited this woman who we had found two nights ago and they are super awesome! We started teaching the first lesson and when we got to the part where we were about to introduce Joseph Smith and after the apostasy she started talking about how she didn’t know how to know for sure which of all the churches are true and pretty much had like all the same problems in her life about religion that Joseph Smith had before the First Vision! It was awesome! The Lord has definitely been preparing her to hear the message of the restoration! So they´re probably gonna be baptized on the 25th if all goes well! So I think for sure were gonna reach our goal!
So these past 2 weeks me and my comp have been focusing a lot on trying to find people who are “elect”. When I first got to the field and heard people talking about "elect" it kinda like offended me in a way cause people made it sound like the gospel isn’t really for everyone, but as I thought about it more some people just really aren’t ready for the gospel in their lives! So we’ve studied about "elects" a lot. There are two scriptures that describe what it means to be "elect". One says mine elect hear my voice and don’t harden their hearts, and the other says mine elect hear my voice and follow. So what we’ve been focusing on is finding people who don’t harden their hearts and who have a desire to follow and ever since we’ve been doing that we’ve been finding awesome people who were just ready for the gospel! We are here to help people to come unto Christ, but we can only help them as much as they actually have a desire to find the truth. So this week we got a system down for finding people who are elect and the lord has been just blessing us with people who are ready!
Today we’re finally gonna clean the bathroom! Haha we’ve cleaned every other part of the house so it doesn’t feel like were camping anymore. And today it will be complete! Haha we’ve spent the last 3 p-days working on the house. Anyway that’s pretty much all that happened this week.
It sounds like life’s about the same back home, except it sounds like you guys are actually finishing projects that you start now! Haha the house is gonna be totally different when I get home! Don’t send me any pictures I wanna see how different it is when I get back.
I’ll be praying that everything goes well with work and hopefully things can start to settle down for you a little bit. Love you and nice hearing from you.
Love,
Elder Raleigh
Ps. also the new mission president is way more lax on the music we can have now. So if you could can you send me the music from that band I showed you a while ago called Whitley? All their music is super uplifting! Thank you.