Weekly Letter: January 3-9, 2012

para mi familia:

Well, this wasn`t the worst week in history, but it was not the best either. We fell short on several goals. We had 80 contacts, 24 lessons, 5 new investigators, 6 in church, none with baptismal date, and none got baptized. However, I feel like we worked much more efficiently. The only thing I don`t like about Toluca areas is that they are huge, and have a lot of little towns, which I am sure are gold spots, but it not possible to go to every town every day. We have several pueblos here, we have San Andrès Ocotlan, Ex-Rancho San Dimas, Valle del Nevado, La Concepciòn, San Antonio la Isla, San Lucas, Rayòn, Tenango del Valle, Jico"something" (I`ve never been there), Atlatlahuca, and San Pedro Cictepec...plus several others that my companion doesn`t even know how to get to. Basically, we tried focusing a lot on two centers of work, where there are more members....namely San Dimas and Atlatlahuca. However, I think this week we are going to try to incorporate a little bit of time in Tenango when we`re in Atla, and a little time in Valle del Nevado, San Antonio, and San Lucas, which are close to San Dimas. Really, we`re trying to expand our efforts little by little, because what we were doing the first week did not work.

We`ve been having a little bit of success. Now that the holidays are out, we find more people in the streets, which is awesome! We found some really cool people that look really interested in our message, but they told us that we should pass by this next week, and we weren`t able to teach them. Hence, that is why we have no new investigators. We are constantly filling up the tank with new people, sifting them through to find the really golden ones, and leaving the rest to ripen a little more.

The Villegas family were those that went to church this week. They have a Christian background, the wife has gone to Pentecost meetings, and the oldest daughter has too. The dad is Catholic, but wants to turn his life around. He just swallows every word we say with a hunger that I have seldom seen. This not only pleases us, but also his wife who has not seen him have so much enthusiasm about religion before. The other two kids are 15 and 12 and they are very mature for their ages. They all seemed to be excited about the church. In fact, after church, the dad asked after the last hour if we were going to get together again like we did in Sacrament meeting. When we told him that we weren`t he was surprised "That was all! It was quick!" We are going to try to put a baptismal date for this Sunday. We`ve already invited them to get baptized, and they`ve accepted, but we weren`t able to put a good date because they left out of town last week.

Yeah, we are really really excited about this week. Man, just talking about them gets me excited! I don`t remember having enjoyed something so much! Please keep praying for us! We are going to get some miracles going this week!

Thanks for everything! I love you all so much!

Finishing strong!

Cariños,

Elder Blackham