Happy Days - 06/11/12

Both Tyler and Brett had baptisms this week.  Pretty cool!

This week was pretty freaking AMAZING! I´m not sure where to start, but I guess I should probably start off with the baptism we had on Saturday.

Entonces, the picture I sent you guys is of me, Bryam, and Elder Ahlborn. The story behind Bryam is really cool actually. So his grandparents are the founders of the Catholic church here in Pedregal. The Catholic Church here in Pedregal is about the size of a football field, and no I´m not exaggerating. Its HUGE, and everyone and their dog either goes there or to the Aposento Alto, an evangelical church that is just as big. Needless to say Pedregal is very religious. So, anyways, he´s got some pretty strong Catholic roots. The other Elders were out walking one night and Bryam comes running to them to tell them that the Catholic church isn´t filling his needs and he wants to check out the Mormons. Due to his work, the office elders could never teach him, but he came to church for a month and a half without anyone bringing him or inviting him really. The office elders recently got emergency transferred to a new area, and we got all of their three investigators! Woo Hoo!  So we taught Bryam, and in the first lesson we challenged him to be baptized and he accepted! So yeah, we taught all of the lessons to him this week, which was pretty interesting/hectic, but it was worth it. His testimony is amazingly powerful, far beyond that of your normal recent convert, and his willingness to be obedient to every commandment shocks me. When we talked about tithing he said he has been waiting for us to talk about it and that he´s more than ready to start contributing. Teaching him was probably the easiest teaching I´ve done on my mission. He wants to learn and he´s willing to change.

Another cool thing that happened this week is that we started teaching Ivonne, a reference that we received from the activity a week ago. She is also progressing amazingly and we are planning her baptism for the 30th of June. She really is ready for it this week, but she´s afraid of it, and she wants to wait it out to make sure she isn´t rushing in to it. The thing is that she knows its true, so now its just a matter of time and telling her to conquer her fears and show her faith. We´ve already told her that we think she´s ready, but we´ve also told her that we want her to feel ready, and if she doesn´t feel it we won´t do it. We invited her to pray about a specific date (she´s already received the answer that she needs to be baptized) so hopefully tonight we can set a date with her. Fun stuff.

Also, this morning I killed a mouse with the bottom of my shoe. It felt really weird squishing him, but I know that we can´t have mice living in our apartment, especially when we know they are coming from the sewer.

Life is good and I´m loving every single second of my mission. The time is going by so fast! Holy cow! The 20th is exchanges, and I feel like it was yesterday when we went to the last exchanges. Everyone says the second half goes by faster than the first half. I still feel like the first half went by way too fast.

I love you guys, you´re all amazing. Remember that the Atonement doesn´t only clean us, it can transform us

Elder Hansen