Safe from the Earthquake

January 18, 2010

Bon Dia Fami Y Amigonan,

I hope that you are all having a terrific day. Thanks for all of your emails and your love and support it was so great to hear from you all. I hope you know that you all keep me going and your words and your love mean so much to me.

Thanks for all the updates on Haiti. We don't get a ton of information out here but I have heard bits and pieces. It sounds like things are really bad over there and it sounds like they need our prayers more than ever.

But one thing cool that I have seen is that it seems that the world has united together to help those sons and daughters of God who need our help. It's really sad about what happened but it's cool to see how the world has come together to help. As for Aruba, no worries all is fine. We actually did have an aftershock at about four in the morning the day after the earthquake. It was in the 4's I've heard 4.0 to 4.7 so I am not really sure. But the best part of the story is that me and my companion slept right through it. Hahah! We were dead tired and we have a bunk bed and so we feel little earthquakes every night when I move around. :)

So I'm sure when the room started shaking we just thought it was something normal. The other Elders called us and said that they woke up. One of the zone leaders said that he was going crazy, haha! So yeah . . . just a little one, but nothing to worry about! Thanks for all being concerned though.

Elder Roggerman and I are still doing really well. We had a goal to hit 30 lessons this week and just as He did last week, God blessed us with things to work out just perfectly to reach our goal. Our baptismal date, who is the daughter of Vivian, is not going to be baptized this Saturday. Vivian told us last Monday that she wants to
wait to have her daughter baptized and we were pretty sad about that. But it's just a part of life in the mission. As we know we really need to get her daughter baptized and so we are going to have a solid lesson with her this week to get her to pray about her baptismal date. I should have a great story for you guys next week so stay tuned.

On Friday we had a cool experience. This really isn't a spiritual "wowzer" experience but it was still a cool missionary blessing. I was riding my bike up the mountain that we always have to ride up and my tire started to wobble back and forth really bad. hahah! We continued to work and it just got worse and worse. The night
came and luckily we just had enough time to run to the bike shop. When we got there the guy was shocked at the state of my tire. I guess most of the bearings had fallen out of the axle. In lay man's terms, something extremely dangerous was going on. It was cool because he just took the tire and fixed it for free! We were both shocked because as cool as Aruba is, they like to charge the tourists a lot. It was just a really cool missionary blessing to have my life be spared but to see the way that the Lord changed that man's heart so that he would help us was even better! We are truly in the Lord's service and He is truly watching over us! It's so awesome!

Another cool experience happened this week. We were knocking doors after it had just rained and we were going to our next appointments. All of the appointments fell. We had four set up at the same time and it just happened that all four of the cidas fell. Something, that well for Aruba, is pretty uncommon. We weren't really sure what to do and all of the sudden we had the impression that we needed to visit this sister in our ward who lived close by. We went by and she was there with a bunch of friends. She invited us in to teach a lesson which was really out of the ordinary. So we sat down and we started to teach. We were both on fire and we taught a lesson like we never really have before, it was really cool.

One of her friends had a lot of questions for us and actually tried to fight with us a little bit. But we were able to answer all of her questions and bear the witness that we needed to bear. We left there knowing that we had been sent to that house to teach that lady. It was cool to be helped with the scriptures needed and the Spanish needed, it was just really cool :) hahah! Sorry I'm a goof I know.

Other then that it was a great week! We started a new program at the church last night. Because of the status of a lot of the employment in Aruba -- that is that employment is basically all in tourism -- a lot of members have work on Sunday. They just can't avoid it. It is the same thing with a lot of the investigators. So we started night church last night and it was an absolute hit. All of our investigators loved it and they will be back next week! I am sure that I will have more to say about it next week so stay tuned!

Thank you all for your love and prayers! You are so awesome and I am so blessed to have you guys in my life!

Keep going strong! I hope you all have an amazing week!

I love you guys! You're in my prayers!

PS Go cougars!