February 12, 2013

 [Our investigator from Venezuela] goes back on the 20th and was/is doing really well, but he doesn't want to get baptized until after he goes to venezuela.  We were shooting for this weekend, but he wants to talk to his parents and fiancee about it.  He loves coming to church and reading the book of mormon, but wants more time before baptism.  He is flying back to texas in april for an engineering conference and has put flying back here to get baptized and then returning to venezuela, but we are just going to send off his information to the missionaries down there and see what they can do.  We had one investigator who was FINALLY coming to church today after weeks of praying for sundays off and then getting transferred to another store where her boss would let her get some sundays to go to church, and then her boss forgot to put that on the schedule.  She traded shifts to get this sunday off, and then got a call that her pregnant daughter was having birthing pains so she couldn't come anyway.  That was more than a little frustrating.

> That is cool that Giselle is [starting to take the discussions].  Elder Villalobos is getting transferred (we find out where to tomorrow) after being here since July.  I'm staying, so if I leave this area the next transfer then I will have been here an equally inordinate amount of time.  Odds are that I will be here longer though.  You really can't find counselors out of 11 units? We have a hard time with that in our branch, but that's cause there just aren't enough people.  The high priests group leader and mission leader are the same dude, but all of the high priests are himself and the branch presidency so all he really does in that regard is tell people that they need to go to the temple and do their home teaching.

January 29, 2013

We dropped our last investigators who were living in the hispanic neighborhoods this week, so the brilliant irony is that all of our investigators live in the places where spanish-speaking people aren't supposed to live and that the neighborhoods where all of the work used to be are practically untouched at the moment.  We added a guy from venezuela this week who is studying english at the university of san diego and is already progressing really well.  He accepted the invitation to be baptized the first visit, and a date the second.  He made it to church on sunday and really liked it.  He goes back to venezuela in 3 weeks, so that's how long we have to baptize him.  The investigator I talked about in the letter for your birthday is doing really well.  She got really sick and we gave her a blessing, and a virus that has been going around that tends to get people for 2 weeks was cured overnight.  She recognized the miracle, and then prayed to get Sundays off and was transferred this week to another store where her boss will let her have some sundays to go to church.  It is starting to warm up, and the food situation isn't that great.  I don't get to eat that great of food because I don't have time to make anything good or money with which to buy good wholesome food.  We had some members feed us 3 times this week.  They had a birthday party early in the week, then on saturday, and then fed us again on sunday.  Overall, things are pretty good.