Mason's Letter -- August 29, 2011

Hey familia,

Well it has been another week for me in the mission. Things continue to be good. This week was full of some traveling, but we got a lot of good work in as well. my comp is progressing well, and his Spanish is really good. Yes we do pay the branch president's wife to make lunch and dinner for us. As for clothes, we are still trying to figure that out. Apparently the other elders had to wash their clothes by hand in the pila. I didn't want to do that haha, so for the first 2 weeks we gave our clothes to a neighbor lady who has a washing machine... but I feel bad asking her every week... so I think today will be by hand...bummer!

The branch is doing pretty good. We are really trying to work on getting more priesthood, basically its the branch pres and us. There are no other faithful priesthood holders. There are a few other men, but they just show up on Sunday and sit there and don't even participate and don't have callings.... they go from inactive to active every other week, and they are returned missionaries! So those are the challenges. After the priesthood class on Sunday (we give the priesthood and investigator classes) I asked one of the other priesthood holders to prepare the class for next week. So that should help a bit, and I told pres to make him the permanent teacher.

This Sunday was kind of crazy, our branch pres is way way good, but this week he accidentally slept in. Oops. So we got there early after getting some investigators and set it all up, and I didn't really know what he had planned, but I just made the agenda real quick and I knew who the speakers were (me and my comp). I was about to just start the meeting without him, and he finally showed up. So that was good.

This week on Tuesday we traveled to the zone meeting. It was pretty good. Unluckily the zone will only end with 5 baptisms this month, that's terrible. So we will turn September around. In our area we are positive in baptizing more than 8 people, so hopefully we can get the whole zone excited and working harder.

Wednesday we had the multi zone conference in San Pedro. It was way good and we felt the spirit really strongly. I loved just going to enjoy it instead of being super stressed out getting everything ready. All of us who are going home this change got to share our testimonies. That was weird being up there as the old ones of the mission.

The rest of the week we just worked really hard and normally. our one family is getting married tomorrow so hopefully that works out fine. They were going to get baptized this Saturday after the wedding... but yesterday they told us that their little boy turns 8 on the 11 of this month. So we will just wait until then to do the baptism and get the 3 of them instead of just 2. Awesome. The other family that we have will put their marriage papers in today and will get married next Monday and baptized on the 10th. Awesome as well. Right there we have 7 baptisms. Then we have a bunch of possibilities as well.

Last week we were contacting and we passed by some apartments and my comp thought we should go and contact there. So we went and talked to a man outside for a bit but he didnt listen to us so we kept moving. We were leaving the apartments but hadn't contacted one of the doors. Well at the end of the street my comp felt like we needed to go back and knock the last door. So we went back. It was a young family with one small child. The husband is from Colombia and speaks really weird. But they let us in and we shared a nice lesson. We didn't have much time so we put on appointment to return. Well we went back last week and they guy had read the whole pamphlet and had marked stuff he liked like the priesthood and stuff. Well he said he just needed more to read to find out if it was true. We went over the Book of Mormon and he was way stoked. They agreed to be baptized the 17th.

There is another family that we found that is really cool as well. We always pass by this one house and there are always a ton of people outside. Well every time we walk by all of them stare at us as we say hi and walk away. I just thought they thought I was cute (well I'm sure they do haha) but we finally decided to talk to them one day. They had told us that lately they have felt a strong impression that they need to look for something more and change their lives.... well they also agreed for baptism the 17th.

We found another man while looking for a less active. He walked by and we talked to him and he invited us over to his house. He had received the missionaries before and had the Book of Mormon. We challenged him to be baptized the 17th as well. He agreed and went to church as well with us yesterday.

We have another lady with her sister who we found like our first day here while contacting in the rain. She is progressing well, but isn't sure about marriage with the man that sort of lives with her. Well yesterday we had a powerful lesson on sacrificing our own desires to follow Christ. She said she felt an amazing feeling in her heart while we talked. Hopefully she makes a decision soon.

So there are people here that are ready. We have been finding them and challenging everyone to be baptized. I think we have challenged like 20 or more people lately. And we have felt the spirit strongly with many of them. I love this work and we will work hard for these last 3 weeks!!
 
Love Elder Mason Cardon