Weekly Letter: May 24-30, 2011

para todos uds:

Well, this letter will be a little more newsy. Our investigators have been progressing really well. We are really excited because we´ve been able to find several families that are really good at listening to us. Miguel Torres got confirmed this Sunday, and then the Bishop asked him to bear his testimony about his experience in conference. His testimony was powerful, also Brother Piña(whom Elder Perez and I baptized his last week in the mission) shared a really powerful testimony. Several people commented how they saw the both of the brothers as future leaders in the ward. Andrés, our Ward Mission Leader said about Miguel Torres "At least a Bishop, if not Seventy." I just had to laugh, but yeah, just to give an idea of how lucky we were to find him.

We also were able to baptize this week. She is girl of about 10 years, and her mother had gotten baptized over a year ago, but the father was living in another country at the time. We talked to the family as a whole on saturday. (We wanted to talk earlier, but couldn´t find them). The Father, who isn´t member, had no problems that Mari Carmen was baptized, but the mother, who is member, felt like it wasn´t time. The thing is that they have family problems ever since Gabriel got home from Panama a year ago, and Lorena(the mom) wanted their family to be good before taking that step. But Mari Carmen really wanted to be baptized and understood very well what was the baptism and everything, so we took some time to talk to the mom about how the Lord blesses the families that are true to the commandments, we explained that Baptism was one of those, and although it wasn´t going to be like magic that everything was going to go better as a family, it was going to be a good step forward. She finally agreed, and Mari Carmen was baptized with Vicente Piña(Brother Piña´s 8-year-old son) on Sunday. It was a great experience, especially because of the spirit of the children there. Truly, "of such is the Kingdom of God."

It is always hard to say goodbye. Sunday night I had to pass by quickly with a recent convert named Enrique, and he´s convinced that if I don´t come back to Mexico that he´ll go to Utah. Also, we passed by with Monica, her son Jovani, and her mother(who still hasn´t gotten baptized) Guadalupe. We tried to animate Guadalupe to get baptized, but she´s still firm that she will get baptized in the least-expected moment....I think because she´s afraid that the neighbors are going to say a lot of things like they´ve been doing to Monica. I was pretty surprised when Jovani, when I finally said goodbye, hugged me and began to bawl. I had no idea that I had affected him in that way, however, I was able to talk to him a little bit and said that everything was going to be okay, that the new missionary that was going to come was a good missionary....and I challenged him to be a missionary too...and he nodded.

So yeah, Elder Rosales is still in Independencia in Toluca, and they changed me over here in Tlalli in the Lomas Verdes Zone. Where I´m at is the basically the Center of Tlalnepantla...another city right next to Mexico(actually the same urban zone). My new companion is Elder García from Chihuahua(or as he says it in his accent: Shihuhua) he has about four months in the mission and about three weeks here...so we´re going to be learning the area pretty well, but he says that we´ve got four investigators with Baptismal date, so it looks like we´ll have some success here.

The district that I´m in is only two companionships, mine and two Hermanas. It´ll be interesting working with Hermanas, I haven´t really gotten to know any Sister-missionaries in all my mission, so it´ll be interesting getting to know them tomorrow. I really don´t have much else to say because I really don´t know what else is going on over here, but I´m excited because I´ve already learned who are my Zone Leaders, and I know both of them really well. Tomorrow we have the District meetings as a Zone in the morning, so I´ll get to know my Zone and District really well.

This is pretty random, but when I got to the church to meet my companion, another missionary asked me if I knew a Mari Tere from Plateros(my first area), I replied "Yeah!" And then he told me that she got baptized this last week. She Irene Sanchez´s daughter that was really difficult at first, but turned golden with Childers and me. So she finally got baptized! I asked quickly about Irene, and she´s still firm...actually, they say that she´s like full of referrals right now. I´ve got to write her, because she´ll probably be entering the Temple soon, and I want to be there when she does!

Anyway, I´m pretty excited! Keep praying for me. We cannot do this work alone. We need Angels to help.

Cariños,

Elder Blackham