June 25, 2012

It has been really hot this week. We've had about two days of rain in the past few months, and we're sweating like crazy every day. But it's great.

This week was good, but we had some challenges. The baptismal date we set with Osiris was really fast, June 30 was only 2 weeks away and he hadn't come to church once yet but we knew he'd be able to be ready if he did his part. The problem has been that a lot of things have been happening and he has stopped progressing as fast as he needs to, so we're going to have to change the date. He couldn't come to church last week because it was Father's day and this week because he had something the night before that he'd get home late. We're not sure what changed that made him less excited about progressing and preparing for baptism, but we're going to find out this week. We've had a lot of appointments fall through like that this week but we've had a lot of time to go out and find too, and we've had success there. We found somebody named Howard that told us about his father who joined the church after he'd already grown up and left home. He said he noticed the difference in his dad's life and he was really impressed by that. It was a really spiritual lesson to hear him talk about that and to be able to testify that that change came from the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and that it was something that each of God's children could experience. He also had a friend there that was interested too that we're going to start teaching.

The other day we took the bikes pretty far out, away from the city, almost to the edge of Juncos. That was really cool, Puerto Rico is beautiful. We found one family who invited us in to eat lunch. They gave us breadfruit, which is really good, it grows on a tree but it's similar to potato, and parcha, which is passionfruit. There is a lot of passionfruit flavored juices and things here but that was the first time I'd had a fresh one and they are so good. The fruit here is great. The other day the elders who work in Humacao (who live with us in Juncos) brought home the biggest mango I've ever seen. It was almost the size of a football. I took pictures but I can't upload them on the computer here. It was giant. They also brought home mangos that were crossed with pineapples. So good.

This week we also had interviews with President. We had a whole meeting with the zone and they had us make profiles on mormon.org. I didn't finish mine because we didn't have a lot of time but it's a really cool website, they have been showing us how we can use it more to share with investigators and show them what members of the church are like.

Anyway, it has been great this week, and we're working hard in the sun.

Elder Duclos