Luke's Letter July 6, 2009

Hey family!

How is everyone? It sounds like you had a fun fourth of July with lots of family and everything. Here it was just another day haha. But a good one. This week has been a lot better than the last I would say, we have found a couple new investigators and one boy in particular that seems promising. His older brother was baptized about 6 months ago and wants his whole family to enjoy the gospel but they are not all quite open to it, but his younger brother Ronaldo seems pretty excited. He came to church the day after we met him and stayed for the whole 3 hours and seemed to make a couple new friends in the deacons quorum. Even though we haven’t had a lot of progressing investigators lately we’ve been working with inactives a lot more, a new focus of the mission, and we’ve been seeing progress with those members. It may not be baptisms, but we’re still helping people come unto Christ which is our purpose. There is one other lady we’ve been teaching, Isabel, about 55ish, who is a devout catholic, but we were able to do some service for her, remove carpet from one room, and share with her from the Book of Mormon. Well after about 2 lessons of sharing, not ever for much time because she was always busy, she opened up to us a little bit about her husband passing away in January, and when she reads the Book of Mormon and visits with us she feels really peaceful and stuff like that. So hopefully we can continue to share with her and teach her about how it’s the Holy Ghost she is feeling and how she can have that peace with her always with the Gift of the Holy Ghost. She hasn’t come to church yet because she always goes to her church, but we visited last time with a member that lives nearby and the member is going to invite her and us over for a family home evening activity thing, and then from there the member is going to invite her to go to church with her. Our members in our ward are amazing. They are almost always willing to go with us to appointments and share their testimonies. I’m so thankful for this ward.

So I wanted to share a scripture that I read this week that I really liked and hadn’t really quite read before. Obviously I’d read it before but it hadn’t touched me like it did this time. Mosiah 26:30- Yea, and as often as my people repent will I forgive them their trespasses against me. It’s a really good scripture, because its so… merciful. Also in reading the Book of Mormon, and other scriptures and stuff I’ve realized something, whenever people ask for forgiveness, or a person does, the Lord always forgives them, and always comes to them. Pretty soon too, pretty much as soon as the person changes and asks for repentance the Lord will deliver them. I am very thankful for this, and thankful for my savior and the Atonement. There’s a line in Preach my Gospel that says the more you learn about the Atonement the more you will desire to share the gospel with everyone. Like Lehi in the vision of the Tree of Life. Its amazing what these prophets write, isn’t it?

Anyway, I’m trying to think of anything funny that’s happened this week. Oh, our gas ran out so we had to shower with cold water for about 3 days, then we bought gas, but the our papito came to fix our leaky sink, and while doing that he disconnected the hot water, so we still don’t have hot water haha. But we shower in the mornings after our exercises so its not too incredibly bad. I’m getting used to it. But hopefully its fixed today haha.

So for p-days, we will have activities every so often, today we played soccer, but it was baby soccer, it was played on a basketball court and it was fun. My legs felt good with the workout. My new companion is a good guy, he has a really strong testimony and everything. But he has his quirks just like everyone, but we get along fine. No problems or anything like that so I’m very thankful. The funniest thing I’ve had to eat… I dunno. Probably the stuff at the restaurant right by our apt. Today I had a big sandwich with churrazco and French fries on it. Another thing I’ve had there was a completo or the hot dogs they have here. The hot dog is a normal size but its in a giant bun and on top of the hot dog is onions, then tomatoes, then avocado spread over it, with mayo on top of the avocado. Its different but good. The chilenos love mayo, seriously, they put it on everything, rice, potatoes, French fries, chicken, it doesn’t matter. Cover it with mayo. But I got to run. I love you all!
Elder Skene