Monday, November 3, 2008

The Worth of Souls Is Great In the Sight of God

(In the last post I referenced a letter about two Elders in Brazil - one was Jacob (Elder Simpson) and the other was Elder Layton's friend and Home Teaching companion at BYU. The reference below has to do with that letter.)

Hola!!!!Coma Esta!? I loved the emails from you guys including papa Rau´s (Elder Nate Rau's father) and the letter from Jacob. Me and Elder Davidson were Home Teaching companions at BYU together and we home taught Andrea, plus we hung out a bunch in the summer.

This week has been very good and not so good at the same time.

I baptized my very first person Saturday. I don't know if I told you, but there's this lady in our ward that´s amazing. She truly knows the purpose of life. She tells everyone about the church and introduces all of her friends to the missionaries. Because of her we are teaching seven different people and four of them have baptismal dates. One of them was the girl I baptized. Her name's Ibis Alessandra Moron Troncos... that was fun to say in the baptismal font. She's great. She has friends in young women's, and reads the scriptures everyday. We always have such a difficult time here helping people keep their commitments, but Ibis went through everything she needed to do to prepare for baptism in two weeks easy. I felt the spirit so strong during the baptism. We were kind've stressed out because we had to wait a while until a priesthood holder come be there to be a witness, but everything turned out great.

Elder Rich was right, one of the hardest things in this mission is the problem with the law of chastity. One of the first things we find out from people is if they're married or not. We've found that mostly people don´t get married because of inconvenience and money, but we found a free marriage on the 6th of December so we tell everyone about it and commit them to get married. There are so many people that believe what we say and the only thing that holds them back is that they don´t want to get married.... dumb.

Last Wednesday Elder Evangelista left to Bolivia, which was his actual mission, he was just waiting to be able to get into the country. So it´s just Elder Zepeda y yo. He´s a hard worker and I love him. It's nice to have a little extra time in the morning for showers.

The not so good part of this week was yesterday. Every week we basically work up until Sunday, because we kind've base if a person is progressing or not if they come to Church, keeping commitment, etc. Sunday morning is the craziest. We get up a half hour earlier and visit as many people as we can that have baptismal dates to try and get them out of bed, and to the capilla (chapel). Yesterday was so discouraging... So many people committed to attend church, our investigators and less actives, but we only had 2 investigators in the Church. I mean, that´s great, it´s just sad when people don´t keep their commitments.

Anyway, it was so good to hear from you. Dad, Mom, Briana, Eric, Curtis....Andrea, I love you guys!

Love, Elder Layton Oh yeah, I got the Halloween package on Wednesday so just in time for Halloween. Oh my freak!!! I didn't know what I was missing. I suddenly realized that I have a huge craving for candy bars, ginger snaps, and parental care.

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