Dear Family,

This week was absolutely excellent. Several good news. First good news: we had a baptism! It was of a 16-yr old girl named Mariel Chocobar. 3 of her sisters and her mom are members, and when the missionaries started teaching her family she wanted nothing to do with the church. One week she showed up at church with her sisters and we didn’t recognize her so we introduced ourselves and asked if she would like to have us teach her. She accepted and we started teaching her. She had already heard the lessons from like 6 different sets of missionaries, but didn’t have a testimony so we focused on gaining a testimony and every lesson instead of teaching the normal lessons we read sections of the Book of Mormon with her and explained it. The Sunday after her baptism (yesterday) was fast and testimony meeting and she got up and bore a sweet testimony even though she was very nervous. Her family was so happy and she’s excited to continue strong in the church.

Second good news: Remember Freddy, the guy we helped drop alcohol? He’s a stud. Last week he dropped alcohol and was doing great, went cold turkey and completely kicked the habit. Every time we teach him he tells us about times in the last days where he’s said no to alcohol. Well, he also smokes. This week we put him the goal to drop smoking completely and... he did it! He gave my comp his last pack of cigarettes (mostly full) and never bought another one. That one was a little harder for him and for the first couple of days he had a little depression problems, but now he is doing great and it’s been 6 days since he dropped smoking. He told us that he loves being free of his addictions. Before he could only think about smoking and drinking and was a really hateful person, always thinking about grudges and such, but now he told us he is so much happier and that he has so much more love for his 6 little kids. (They are so cute! 5 little girls, one little boy.) He loves reading the pamphlets we give him and loves the Book of Mormon and wants to get baptized super bad, now we just need to get him to church a few times and he can get baptized! Yesterday he asked us what he needed to do to get baptized and my companion told him he needed to go to church 3 times. He told us "I don’t want to go 3 times, I want to go the rest of my life!!!!" What an awesome guy! He’s the 2nd oldest of a family of 11 kids, mainly boys with similar problems. His youngest brother (18) after seeing his great example told him that he wants to stop drinking and smoking and drugging too because his life really stinks right now and he doesn’t feel good at all. We’re going to teach both of them tonight. Pray for Freddy and Maxi to keep progressing! They are such great guys!

Anyway, that was my awesome week. Today we went to another All-You-Can-Eat restaurant, which is pretty pricey down here, but I’d say we got our money’s worth. Hehe, the waiters kept on looking at us as we went up for the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th plates. I love you all tons and I hope you’re all doing great. The church is true! Keep on living the gospel! It’s not easy. President Packer said that it has never been easy to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. But even though it’s not easy it is most certainly worth it, so do the courageous thing and keep the commandments!

Love,
Elder Spencer


At the baptism. The girl between my comp and me is Mariel, the
rest is her family. The guy under my arm is the bishop. Awesome guy!



Me and some missionaries at the All you can eat. There were 6 of us.