January 16, 2012

Dear Mom and Family,

This week has been a good week. Maynor's mom seems to have gotten in the way this week. He asked permission to go to mutual and she said no and he didn´t show up to church. The Lopez Gil (pronounced Hill) family is the family that we were teaching that one day. The mom told us that she would talk to Maynor´s mom and try to answer her questions and invite her to talk with us. We haven´t had the chance to talk with them about that yet. Until we get the chance to communicate with Maynor´s parents, we can´t do much more, but he does turn 18 the day I get home I think so he will be able to make his own decisions then. Sister Lopez told us he wanted to get baptized as soon as he was free to do so, so we´ll see.

We got contacted this week, for a change. We were walking down the street towards a members house when a yellow car with black stripes and a spoiler drove by and honked. We waved kind of robotically because everyone, friendly or not friendly, makes noises at us. When we got to the top of the hill, we found that that car had stopped and was waiting for us. We got to the window on the passenger side and there was a young man with a 10 quet bill to hand to us. We tried to decline as politely as we could but he kept insisting. He finally put down the bill and grabbed a juice and said, "If you won´t take my money then take this." Then he told us he wanted to talk to us and asked us where and when we could meet. We arranged for the next day a little earlier than we´re use to at the church. The next day he showed up and we talked a little bit. He explained that he did drugs and hung out with the kind of people who also did that kind of thing. We asked him what caused him to decide to talk with us and he responded sincerely, "Life is really hard without God." We began explaining the focus of our message and that we could teach him, but the change would come from his efforts to act accordingly. Then the subject turned to religion in general, which guided us to share the story of the restoration and we explained that this was the major difference between us and other churches. We gave him a Book of Mormon to read and explained roughly what we would be teaching the next few meetings. He didn´t come to church like he said, but we have an appointment with him tomorrow so we´ll see why, if he comes.

We resolved to go and try to visit William and Maria every day this week and see if we manage to get in at least once. If not we´ll at least have tried our best.

Thanks for always letting me know how things are at home. I´ve really appreciated it. I love you all and look forward to seeing you all once again.

Love,
Elder Landon James Crapo