December 11, 2016
Hello family,
We had a great week! Again. On Tuesday we had leadership council with President Brown. All the ZLs, the Sister Training Leaders, and the DLs went at first for a training. It was kind of a fiasco at first because they were doing construction in the first chapel we went to and so we had to go to another one and they were doing like a preschool graduation thing there. But it worked out. It was a great, and very spiritual meeting. I learned a lot. So the training went kind of long and then afterwards the DLs left and we had a leadership council with president which was also really good. We didn't leave until like 6:30 though and it started at 9.
Then on Wednesday was the Purisima. It's like catholic-nica Halloween. A bunch of people put flashy lit-up Maria shrines all over the place and people walk around with feed sacks, sing a song to maria at the various shrines and the owners of the shrines give you food or candy or toys. Some people just give out orange rice. Needless to say it wasn't something that we participated in. Everyone was throwing out fireworks in the streets. Fireworks here aren't very pretty, they're just super loud. The streets were just crowded and it was crazy. Lots of non-catholics participate just to get a bunch of free stuff. And then at midnight they lit off a ton of fireworks too. That was kind of annoying.
On Saturday Angie got baptized. She was so excited. She was really ready too. I think she's been reading more of the Book of Mormon than most of our adult investigators.
We've been teaching a new family that I actually found a while ago that went to the devotional last week. Her name is Grettel and his name is Jose. They kind of fight a lot and they're not married yet but we're seeing them get along a lot better now that they've been going to church. Yesterday they LOVED church. It was cool because I feel like several of the speakers were just speaking to them and saying what they needed to hear. The ward also treated them very well.
We've been working with several other people we found in the last week that weren't able to go to church this week. We found a family named Roberto and Areceli from old investigators in the area book. They already know a lot about the church and they're excited to get going again. They sure don't want a lot of pressure though. They live in a kind of sketchy neighborhood and there was some gang activity around us yesterday when we went to visit them. We yelled "Buenas!" (the equivalent of knocking on the door) and we could see people inside. Out on the street behind us there were some boys playing basketball. Then a car pulled up and other boys got out and the boys that were playing basketball just took off and they looked scared out of there minds. Right when all of that happened Roberto yelled at us to get inside and he hurried us in and locked the door. Then we just heard a lot of people running around and yelling and stuff. The people were pretty worried. But someone called the cops and it calmed down.
We're also teaching a new guy named Ricardo. He's pretty cool. Just pray for him to go to church this Sunday.
That's about it though. It's definitely starting to sink in that Christmas is just around the corner. I'm really excited to talk to you guys!
Have a great week!!
Elder Smith
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