April 22, 2013

Mi querida familia :)

Lazaro's baptismal service was better than I could have ever hoped.  He was there an hour early to get ready and take pictures.  So excited the whole time and he was just acting so giddy about getting into the water when the time came to finally do the actual ordinance.  He stuck his toe in to test out the water, shrugged and said "LET'S GO!"  He popped up out of the water and was just so happy.  It was so happy for me and Elder Nelson to be able to see him take that step.  I performed the confirmation and all of the words just came to me.  I wasn't nervous and it just felt so right.  He told us last night when we were eating dinner with President Mauerman that he could hear all of our stomachs rumbling like surround sound during the confirmation!  Haha he's really funny and SO happy to be a member of the church.  He invited his friend to the baptismal service, so we'll follow up with her in the next few days.  Elder Nelson and I both translated for his interview.  He didn't want any of us to go out of the room for the interview, so all four of us were there.  Our district leader, Elder Baczuk, told us that some of his answers were the best he'd ever heard.  Hopefully not just because we were translating what we wanted him to say :)  Haha just kidding!

Lazaro was a tender mercy from the Lord, it honestly doesn't feel like we did much other than just teach and he was pretty receptive to everything.  The most prepared person I think I've ever met.  He's getting along really well with everyone in the ward too.  We are still working to find people on our own and working with a couple of families.  I'll send some pictures of one of the families from Honduras.  They are wonderful.  We hit it off really well with all of them, but here's hoping they don't just think that we're there to be their friends.  They fed us this Honduran dish called baleadas.  They are SO good.  SO SO good!  

Things have been great, now we're just kind of sitting here thinking "what's next?" and hoping the Lord keeps blessing us as we work hard in the San Jose Spanish Branch.  We'll be working more with the members in the coming weeks, leaving them with weekly challenges to hand out Book of Mormons or pass along cards or whatever else we can think of.  Let me know what you're comfortable doing, maybe that could help us think of things we can do to get members to "catch the wave" of missionary work!  I'll be praying for your friend.  You're doing great things.  No effort is ever wasted :)

Love you so much!!  Have a wonderful week 

Eric

Lazaro's Baptism