November 1, 2010

Dear Family,

This week was great. I’m starting to notice a pattern. Every week is great, haha! Happiness does not depend on circumstances, it depends on our obedience. If you are obedient to God’s commandments, you can have come what may, and love it. :)

This week was hot. really hot. really really hot. (95 degrees and it’s only the beginning of spring.) There is a hill right next to our area, about the size and distance away as Y Mount from BYU. This Friday, it caught on fire all by itself and burned half the mountain. Hot hot hot. Fortunately, we had lots of appointments the hot part of the week, so we spent more time in than out. Even so, I am now nice and bronze, except for my nose, which is cherry red unless I use sunscreen. I started using sunscreen.

Also fun, this week we had a Mother’s Day dinner (they celebrate it in October down here) for the moms of the ward and the master chef of the chickens was yours truly. It was so fun! We charcoal grilled 20 whole chickens and they turned out soooo yummy! The best news is, only 12 moms came to the dinner, hahaha, so we got to take 2 chickens home! This week was also great because we finally found some more people who would actually let us in their house and teach them, after a nice long dry spell of that the last few weeks. We are happy campers and hopefully this Sunday we’ll have a few families in church.

The best news of the week for me happened when my old comp called me to update me on some exciting things in my old area. First of all, remember my baptism Veronica Zamorano? We baptized her, then two of her kids, and we were teaching her two older daughters before I left and the baptism of one of them is scheduled for next week. Well here’s the news. Her "husband" (they were never married) had always been pretty against us. He was never rude to our faces, but he did not want for her to get baptized because he belongs to a rock and roll evangelist church. She kicked him out of the house because he was turning the kids against her and the church and telling them they could do bad things. Anyway, fast forward a few months and now all the family but him has been attending regularly for 2 months. They improved so much as a family and it was so incredible to see the change. Anyway, Alberto, the husband, was walking by the church one day, and stopped and looked at it and started crying because he had been seeing all the blessings his family was enjoying and he was missing out on his family and the blessings. He is now listening to the missionaries, and he came to church this Sunday for the first time. He is making lots of changes, including dropping alcohol and lots of other vices, and he wants to be baptized. I am so happy to see this family come together. That’s what the gospel is for, families. They can go from the most destroyed, separated wrecks (as they were), to complete happiness by living gospel principles, and one day they will be able to enjoy this happiness that they have worked so hard to build, by changing their lives and accepting the gospel, for eternity as they go to the temple and are sealed.

The church is true! Salvation and true Happiness aren’t easy to reach, but they are sure worth every brick we lay to reach them (D&C 64:33-34). I love you all!

-Elder Spencer