February 6, 2012

It sounds like you have a load of plans ahead of you this week.  I hope that everything works out wonderfully and that Hannah finally decides on a school.  It's great that she is auditioning at Utah State.  One of the sister missionaries was telling me about how, surprisingly, their music program is pretty high up there in nation ranks or something like that.  She is going to have the best time ever at All State.  Those were some of my best memories from high school.  You learn so much it is incredible!  

I would say that I am jealous of the foot of snow outside and the bright blue sky, but here it's still green and in the 80's.  It's crazy how moving just a couple miles south makes such a HUGE difference.  My new companion's name is Elder Winward and he is from Lehi, UT.  He has been telling me a lot about the areas that he had been in before in Georgia and South Carolina and it sounds like there are a lot of funny people up there.  We technically are further south, but when it comes down to it, I would say that Georgia's probably the most southern state.  Elder Winward's Spanish is amazing.  He told me one of his goals is to talk like he's a Mexican by the end of his mission.  He does a good job at it too, I just told him that I would prefer to talk more like someone from South America.  Mexican's use a lot of twang when they speak and have a million slang words.  It's almost like a different language sometimes.  It's great how being around Hispanic people all the time is helping me to distinguish where somebody is from just based on their appearance or the way that they talk.  It makes it a lot easier to talk to people and you connect a lot better when you can guess where they are from.  

Speaking of Mexicans, we met a man named Erasto from Cuernavaca last night.  He was really smart and could understand every single thing that we told him.  He told me that they call it the land of eternal spring and told me it's wonderful.  It made me think about how that's where almost all of my district is right now and it was a little sad, but really I feel like being a missionary is probably pretty similar no matter where you are.  I love Florida.  

Elena is progressing so much.  She will be baptized sometime soon, the only problem is that she doesn't feel the joy that she felt in the Catholic church.  We are trying to help her have a spiritual experience, and we have explained to her that it might just be that she feels that joy in the Catholic church because it's what she is used to.  Her sister that lives in Honduras is a member and told her she would buy a plane ticket to come over here if she is baptized.  There are just so many things pointing her in the right direction, we just are trying to help her recognize that.

It's still the same work...  We're finding, teaching, and baptizing in Jacksonville, FL so just pray that we'll be blessed with more elect and ready people to teach.  I love you a lot and hope you all have a wonderful week.  I am doing great!

Love,

Eric