Mason's Letter -- April 30, 2011

Hey familia,

Today I'm writing pretty early because we are going to Pulapanzak, the biggest waterfall in Central America I think. It's here right outside of San Pedro, so the president is going to take us up there.

So this week has gone really well. This month we really fell with the baptisms. We only baptized half of what we wanted due to a lot of factors. First off we had conference right at the beginning of the month...and unfortunately that un-focuses the missionaries a little. Then we had changes the next week...and we un-focused again...then the last week was Semana Santa, so everyone went to the beaches and a lot of missionaries also went on a mental vacation. So we only ended with 150 baptisms. We did baptize more families in the mission though. This month is looking really good though. We really have been stressing families families families, and finally the missionaries are responding. The zone leaders are all really pushing it too now and I think everyone has the same vision. At first I felt like the president and us were the only ones with that vision, but now everyone has it. It's really awesome and I love the things we are doing right now. So this month we are pushing to baptize 400 people with 75 complete families. And it really looks positive right now. So thats exciting.

Well for Easter Sunday, Sister Veirs invited us over for lunch. It was delicious, and she even had dyed some eggs. After that there was a special church Spanish broadcast play thingy on the birth and resurrection of Christ. So we went to that. On Monday we invited the Celestial Zone, the zone that baptized the most families, to play soccer and eat with the president. The rest of the week we just had interviews again in the office, so it was a boring week of revising area books.

We did finally get to do some good work in our area though. We really have wanted to baptize families there, even though we can't work too often. But we went there every spare moment we had. and we received a referral from the sisters here in San Pedro, and we went this week to contact him. We went and he wasn't there, but his cousins all received us, there were about 4 of them. Then the next day we went back and taught him and some nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters and cousins and a bunch of other people that live there. It went really awesome. Apparently this guy and all of his extended family live there with him and they all loved what we were teaching. They are super excited to go to an activity that we have in the church tonight and they all want to go tomorrow to the worship meetings. It's like overall a family of 10. We challenged the 5 of them that were with us yesterday to be baptized on the 14th of this month and they all said that they would prepare themselves. The only hard thing with them is finding them all in the house at the same time. The oldest brother of the family who we received the referral of is really excited to go to church and is making everyone excited as well. He is way cool. I'm really excited about that family. They will be way awesome.

So other than that it has been a normal week. There have only been a few disobedience problems so that's good. It's getting super hot here...that's not so good, but now with our AC in the house we sleep great! I hope you all have great weeks. I'm still waiting for that Easter package from mom, but it should be here soon.

Love Elder Cardon