January 25, 2012

	Jan 25

The stake must still be fasting for us

They're reading my letters in stake conference? I'm going to have to be more careful about what I write. Everything keeps going really well here, and we're still seeing miracles. All the families we found have stayed firm, and we've even found another one, Manuel and Keila. We made contact with the wife a little while ago and passed by for the appointment but they weren't home. The other day we were planning and we decided to go by one more time, just to give it another chance. We got there a little late, about 8 or so. The husband answered and recognized us because his wife had told him about us, (we were glad because we thought they'd forgotten completely). He said they couldn't talk right then but that we could go by the next day. When we went by they were great. We applied some principles we'd been studying from the 12 week program (the new program for new missionaries that the mission has been working a lot with) about teaching people, not lessons. It was a really good lesson, they felt really comfortable talking with us and sharing their concerns. It impacted him a lot that our invitation was to ask Heavenly Father to be able to know for himself if the message was true. He said there were so many different voices in the world saying they had the truth and that he didn't know what to do, or who to trust. It was great to show him that this was something he could have his own testimony of, and know without a doubt that the things we'd shared were true. He even committed to read the whole Book of Mormon. They also really loved when we talked about families. They have a little girl who's about a year old and they told us how important the family was for them, and how they make an effort to spend as much time as they can doing things together as a family. They were great and we're really excited for them.

Edgardo and Givendolee, the family with two little girls that came to church last week, couldn't make it to church this week because she got really sick. After church we went to their house to see why they hadn't come (they don't have a phone) and Edgardo was gone because he'd gone to the church to apologize for not being able to come. We've had some good lessons for them. We were showing the little girls pictures out of the gospel art book and the older one loved the picture of Helaman and the 2000 stripling warriors because of the horse he was riding and she kept asking to see it again.

The Rodriguez family who were the referral from the members are coming to a ward activity tomorrow, and that should be really good. We've taught them almost all the lessons and it's always impressive to see how much of a difference it makes to have the members there, supporting and helping them.

It's been really exciting to see all these things happening. Yesterday there was a meeing in Caguas for the district leaders. Elder Visker is the district leader so we went up there and I got to see all the Caguas elders again. During the meeting, the Rosario family needed something from the missionaries so I got to go on an exchange with Elder Hammer and see them again, so that was really good. Today I had to go change my Utah license to a Puerto Rican one so we drove up to Caguas again. All I had to do was take the written test but I got it done. I got the letters and stickers yesterday. Tell Brookie I'll try to find Rapunzel's tower with the map she gave me.

I love you all, have a good week

Elder Duclos