Santificaos

Hey guys

We had quite the busy week last week, working mostly outside our area.  I started the week doing divisions with Elder Holmes, an elder I would play a lot of bball with in the MTC.  He is a district leader in the zone so I went to his area to teach and learn.  He has put together a cool member plan that deals with doing family home evenings with the members.  I have always wanted to create an effective plan like the one he has made up to help the members complete their responsibility of sharing the Gospel with everyone.  It is a competition within the ward that Elder Quinnelly and I started yesterday at church.  What happens is, we go to the members house and write down the names of everyone they know that arent members.  Then we set up a family home evening so that thwey can pray and invite 3 of the families to come.  They get points for having the family night, inviting the people, and taking them to church later on.  It is fun because the members get competitive and we get to teach a lot more people.  So our goal is to do a family night with each family in the ward every 3 weeks so that they can continue inviting all the people they know.  We are excited for it and think that we will have more success in the missionary work and the members will progress more spiritually at the same time. (family, you should try this program out in our home, I promise you tons of blessings if you do so!!!!!!)  We also did a lot of baptismal interviews throughout the week because the zone baptized quite a few.  I always love doing those interviews because I basically get to hear the testimony and the conversion story of the people.  They always express how grateful they are for the elders that taught them and it always gives me more energy to go out and work to find these people that are looking for the truth.  We also had a stake 4th of July party which was kind of funny.  The only people that went were the missionaries and the few members in the stake that speak english but it was so nice of the stake to do the party and program for us as american missionaries.  They read the declaration of independance and also did some special musical numbers while us missionaries sang the national anthem and my country tis of thee.  This week, we also had our multi zone conference with President Kusch and his wife.  We were there with Iguala so I got to see Elder Cornejo and Pearson and a lot of other elders I know so it was a cool reunion.  I loved the conference, especially when President told us about planning for the future.  He told us that we can never plan the callings we will recieve in the church or other things that happen in our life, but we can plan how we act today so that we can have the companionship of the Holy Ghost to guide us toward the future that the Lord has planned for us.  That comment gave me a lot of comfort and strength to continue to focus on the mission and try my best everyday to be guided by the Spirit.  After the conference, the asistants, Edler Quinnelly and I went out to lunch with President Kusch and his wife.  We talked about a lot of stuff and more than anything got to know eachother better.  I really love them both and look forward to working side by side with them in this great work.  We finished the week by spending the whole day Saturday traveling and doing interviews in a smal village in the mountains called Chacalapa.  It is about 3 hours from our area and we spent a lot of time waiting for the interviews.  But it was all worth it because the couple we interviewed was truly converted and they have the goal to go to the temple in a year.  Even though they didnt even have money to buy shoes for themselves or for their kids, they are willing to sacrifice money every Sunday to travel to the chapel 1 and a half hours aways from their house.  They are truly amazing.  We got blessed by the Lord as well for all the service we did outside our area.  We are going to baptize a 19 year old named Arturo this week who is excited about the church right now.  He has started coming to our house every morning to study english because he wants to learn.  We teach him english through the book of mormon and the Liahona magazines.  So we teach him english and the Gospel at the same time.  I really enjoy it and I hope he can go on a mission someday as well.  We also just started teaching his family and his english teacher too so there are a lot of possible baptisms from them.  They are a great family and Arturo, his dad, and english teacher came to church on Sunday.  Right now, I am in the process of sanctifying myself completely so that I am always worthy of the gift of the Holy Ghost because that is so crucial in the work.  I am eliminating everything in my life that would drive the Spirit away so I am looking forward to these next few weeks of being guided by the Spirit.  Love you all and hope all is well!!!!