A Change in the Mission

February 16, 2010

Dear family and friends,

It was good to hear from you all this week! Thank you all for writing and for being so loving and kind and interested in my life, even though I am so far away. It really means a lot to me so thank you!

I hope that everyone had a good Valentines Day. To be honest absolutely nobody celebrates it down here. The husbands and wives exchanged gifts but from what I saw it's nowhere near as a big as it is back in the states! I hope you all had fun.

OK . . . so two pieces of news. First transfers haven't happened yet. I am still in Aruba for one last preparation day. But tomorrow I will be flying out to Curacao to start working on that island! I am really excited! I have heard that is a lot like Aruba but that there is a lot more of a European influence over there then there is here. There is a lot of an American influence here in Aruba and over there there are a lot more Dutch people! So I'm excited to get to work! My new companion is going to be Elder Jacobsen. He is a cool guy. He was in our district last transfer and he trained one of the elders in my group when I cam out so I'm sure that I will be able to learn a lot! I'm excited to get to work with him.

The other big piece of news is one that I wasn't sure when I could share so I was going to wait to share it. But it sounds like it's in the news so I can share it now. They are combining the two missions in Puerto Rico when President Martineau and the other mission president get released this June. The islands that I am now living on are going to be absorbed into one of the missions in the Dominican Republic. When we heard about that change we were all shocked. I am excited though. It's going to be fun to participate in this big change. Last night we found out who our new mission president will be. I am really excited. He is one of the most amazing men that I have ever met. His name is Elder Alvarado. He is currently serving as an Area Seventy in Puerto Rico. He is a native Puerto Rican and he is just awesome. It is going to be really cool to serve with him. It was a really cool experience to just realize how truly inspired everything in this work is. The Lord truly knows exactly what and who would be best for this work, and it's just awesome.

The work for my final week in this awesome area went really good. President Martineau gave us the challenge to talk to 200 people in a day. We decided to do it on Saturday and it was a blast. We went to a local grocery store and asked if we could help people load up their groceries in their car. It was a lot of work but so much fun. It was cool to talk to all those people. We got a lot of good excuses and some funny ones too, but it was still a really cool experience to have such a high goal and to go for it! I loved it. I got pretty fried but it was totally worth it!

I gave a talk in church this week and that was good. It was funny I was giving the talk in Papiamento and then I read a part of a talk in Spanish. After I read the part in the talk I just kept speaking Spanish. Even though everyone in the ward knows Spanish and most of them speak it as their native language (a majority of the members are Latins) I got some funny looks in the congregation. It was funny. I said sorry for switching and went back to Spanish. It was a fun talk to give. I got to talk about missionary work which is a topic that any missionary would love to talk about.

The baptismal dates that we have in our area are doing well. Renalt wasn't able to come to church and we were a little disappointed. He had to work a 16-hour day on Sunday so he wasn't going to be able to come in the morning or in the night. We are really excited for him because he is so golden. He has started taking the Book of Mormon to work so he can read it during his breaks. It's amazing to see the love that he has found for the book. I love being able to see the change in these people's lives when they start to receive the light of the gospel.

On the other hand our other investigators with baptismal dates aren't really progressing. I'm kind of bugged about it and I'm tired and so I am not in a mood to talk about it, so sorry.

Anyways, it was a good week this past week! I am absolutely loving it down here! Don't worry about what I just said, I just don't want to talk about investigators who aren't progressing. Neither you nor I want to hear about that so yeah.

Anyways, thanks to all of you again for your love and support! I can't wait to hear from you guys again. I love you all and I am grateful for your love and support.

Tonight I go to bed in Aruba, tomorrow I go to bed in Curacao! Should be a fun day tomorrow! Pray for me!