Jan. 30, 2012 in Melo with Elder Baxter

Hey all,

Another good week. Lots of heat. I finally gave in yesterday and put on a hat. I've been using lots of sunscreen (SPF 90+) but it got to the point yesterday that I really felt like I needed to have some shade on my head. This is the heat we had last year at Christmas time. Summer's just a little behind schedule this year, which is nice. The worst part of summer is toward the end, so I'll get to miss that. Rather, I won't be here for the heat...I won't miss it.

We've been having some rough times with our investigators who don't go to church. We have a lot of people to teach and it's being really good, but they just don't go to church. Melo just has a really laid back atmosphere and everyone says, ´´I'll definitely go to church. That sounds great!´´ and they don't go. It can get frustrating. Yesterday the only investigator we had in church was Mario, the deaf-mute...´´husband´´ of a member. They're not technically married, just living together. Mario legally can't get married because his parents declared him insane when he was little. He's now in legal battles to get his legal rights. But the Sister is seeing some progress. She doesn't have all of her membership rights (disfellowshipped?) because of the situation but she's really active and wants to fix things. She took the decision the other day to split up with Mario if they couldn't get the marriage thing figured out. The minute she was praying and said she was willing to do whatever it took to get her rights back, a Seventy called her and told her that her paperwork were being transfered to Salt Lake to be reviewed. There's a really good chance she can get her rights back and this Seventy is a lawyer, and he can figure out how to get them married. It's been really cool seeing all this happen. It was a big testimony to me that God hears prayers. Sister Julia told us that she prayed for hours thanking God, even though she didn't understand most of what the Seventy told her. She just knew it was good and that God had answered her prayers. It was awesome.

Anyways, things are pretty tranquilo around here. Tomorrow, I've got Zone Leader council for February which I love. It's probably my favorite part of being a Zone Leader. We have really good discussions there and learn a lot. It's just 24 Zone leaders, the assistents and President and Sister Da Silva. Then Sister Da Silva makes us lunch and it's always really good. So yeah...vamos Arriba! 12 hours on a bus round trip! It's all worth it.

In other news, all the missionaries and members are starting to realize how close I am to going home. People are asking what I'm gonna leave them and sell them and stuff like that. There's an RM in our ward who holds up his fingers every week to let me know how many weeks I have left. It's really funny. It's getting close. I'm getting pretty excited, but there's so much stuff to do here, it's hard to even think about that stuff. It's weird that people are already committed to going to my homecoming. I can't even get an investigator to come to church if they commit to go on Saturday night, let alone 19 committed 4 weeks before. Utah is a very different place than Melo.

Anyways, I don't know if there's much else to tell. Talk to you next week! Much Love!

Dear Readers of this blog: You are all invited to Bryan's "talking in church" on Feb. 26th at 1:00 pm. Directions later! Thanks for reading-Joyce


--