Success: Step by Step, Day by Day

From February 14 email:

(With a Blake Dowdle voice)...GOOOOOO MISSION....wahwhooooooo!. Man the mission is so legit. It's just great! Well, we have been seen success slowly but surely. Step by step, day by day.

So, mom you were talking about making a new dress for Rae. You should just give her my old medieval costume and she can be Joan of Arc.....I would. Plus she would win some history points right? Maybe even best costume.

Anyways I did get the packages you sent. They arrived at different times but I got them. It looked like one had been opened. There were some nuts and floss but that was about it. Thanks for the package it was great, and yes my birthday was abbastanza fun.

Man you were making such a fuss last year when I didn't skype you all. Now when you are in Puerto Rico it's, "oh we will be on vacation....good thing our phones work...we can just do that..." haha LAME!!!!! No i'm just messing that will be fine with me. I just remember though we might have P-Day that day so I might be busy writing letters but I will try to find time to talk with yall...just kidding again...I could go on forever.

Now to more serious business. We found out that Fernando has another name so now we call him Jeevan Fernando or just Jeevan or just Fernando. He doesn't really care which one it is. His baptismal date though for March 2 is planted deep into his heart. He came to church sunday and despite the meetings just sucking big time he managed to have an ok experience. I say that church sucked because it did. We had a guy come from the stake and talk about finding jobs for the first 2 hours(we pulled Fernando out after the first hour and taught him a lesson from Gospel Principles). Then the same guy talked for 30 minutes during sacrament meeting about the SAME THING!!!! I was supposed to give a talk(they called me the night before haha too) and it was going to be on the BoM being a testament of Christ, but they needed more time for this other guy. It was probably the least spiritual meeting I've ever attended. The guy wasn't prepared at all for his first presentation and then his talk was a real sleeper.

I shouldn't complain because Jeevan came to church but the wards here don't really know how to host a church meeting. We tell our investigators how church will be so spiritual and worthwhile, but then it's hard for even me to feel the spirit in church. I guess I need to have more faith in our church leaders and maybe give them some advice?

Our lesson went amazing though with Jeevan. We taught him about the gospel and the plan of salvation this week and he understood everything. He has already finished reading 2 Nephi!!!! He has told us that he knows it's true so we are super excited about that. He even told us that he is excited for his baptism. Tonight we are teaching the Word of Wisdom and we feel it will all go well...Still pray for us!

Juliet's got a date with baptism.

I think one of the highlights of the week came with Juliet. Alright so it's Valentines Day night and we are at our appointment with Juliet. Her husband David who is just a lazy sack of potatoes said he was too tired so he just watched tv in the other room. We were actually sort of glad because he wasn't interested in the other lessons too much, and was really holding Juliet back. Of course we'd want them to be together because it's a family but his wife is at a point where she needs to learn and he's not helping her learn.

So we start the lesson and right off the bat we ask her if she had read the BoM. She told us that she hadn't found time to read it. We decided immediately to talk about the importance of it in our lives and how it could help her know which church was true. Following the explanation and testimonies of my companion and I, we read all of 2 Nephi 31. We emphasized throughout the reading the importance of following Jesus Christ. She was in gamba and understood everything. Again we bore testimony of what we had read and asked her why baptism was important. We followed that up by inviting her to be baptized on the 16 of March and she said yes! It was really awesome and she has definitely been prepared by the Lord. Her kids Divine and Ephraim are super cute kids and super funny.

It's finally warming up!

I will start thinking a bit about school. I still have no clue what i'm wanting to do....agh...yeah I know it's not good.

Yeah I got grandpa's letter about Franco and yeah I remember who he is. We'll start thinking about what we can do with him. There was one thing that wasn't clear. Is the picture for me or for Franco?

Love you guys...Thanks for the emails, packages and love....