September 3, 2012

Well they finally took me out of Juncos. It was a lot of fun there and I loved that area but I'm excited for what's ahead now. On Wednesday night they called and told me I was going to Arroyo. It's still in the Caguas stake so I'm in the same zone but it's about as far from Caguas as the stake gets. It's in the southeast corner of Puerto Rico and our area covers Arroyo, Patillas and Maunabo. We live in Guayama and we don't have a car so we have to bike about half an hour every day to get to our area and another half hour the days we go to Patillas. But it has been great so far. My companion is Elder Arteaga from Bolivia and he got here at the same time as Elder Raymundo.

Arroyo is awesome, it's a branch that just opened up in the past few months - it used to be part of the Guayama ward, so it's small but really great. One of the members here was an AP in the Puerto Rico San Juan mission that just finished one transfer ago. He's the first counselor in the branch presidency and the ward mission leader so we've been working a lot with him. His mom isn't a member and has been taking the lessons for about 7 years. Yesterday we went over and had a really good lesson about reading the Book of Mormon with real intent. We explained that when somebody wants to know if the Book of Mormon is true, they need to read it really seeking that revelation from Heavenly Father. It was so cool to be able to help somebody use the Book of Mormon to find guidance for their lives, especially something so significant as finding the restored church. During that lesson, I think I learned more from what was said than I ever have in a lesson. 

We also taught the boyfriend of a recently reactivated member in Patillas. His name is Daniel and the missionaries have been teaching him for about a month. He always had problems with coming to church and they couldn't ever get him to come. On Friday we went by and had a really powerful lesson about the sabbath day and baptism and invited him to come to church he came on Sunday. and he accepted the 23rd of September as a baptismal date! It was awesome and we are really excited for the 23rd. 

Well, I am as happy as ever. I like the new area and I am excited to see some real growth here. 

Elder Duclos