HEY! 

Well, we had a pretty successful week this week.  We had 9 investigators in church, including the Araujo family.  They are so awesome!  I can´t remember if I told you already, but we found them from a reference from Sis. Argyle right before she left.  Anyway, they are progressing pretty well, although they had some doubts and still don´t have a baptismal date.  However, we are also teaching Ines, who is a little old lady that has lost all her family to death.  She´s pretty lonely and one of the members helps her cook, clean, etc.  She´s for sure going to be baptized, but she has to quit smoking.  Lets pray for her, what do you think!?  We are also teaching Daniel and Alicia, who aren´t progressing as well as we´d like.  They need to get married and Daniel needs to quit smoking as well.  We´re hoping Daniel changes and accepts the spirit into his heart.

So yesterday we had a crazy experience.  We got a reference from a contact (its crazy sometimes how we find people to teach).  Anyway, we passed by his house and found out that its a family of 14!  And, the mom  and dad are Evangelical pastors!  So, we set an appointment and passed by yesterday.  We walked in and taught 7 of the 12 kids, as well as the parents.  We were expecting some pretty tough opposition (my heart was flying and I was super, super nervous.  In fact, for an instant I forgot spanish!).  But, the Lord blessed us big time.  They all listened, the spirit was SUPER strong and all 9 of them commited to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it.  They didn´t want to set up another date for us to return, which might be a bad sign, but they even told us they felt a lot of peace and that they were in agreement with what we taught (we taught the restoration of the gospel).  Anyway, that was a first timer.

Our plan is to start working A LOT with the recent converts here in the branch.  We´re positive they are going to be able to lead us to the most nonmembers and help us teach and baptize them.  Its awesome because that also helps with retention.  Anyway, we´re learning a ton of stuff from our new mission president, including how to work with recent converts.  We´ve also been having leadership seminars for all the district leaders, zone leaders, and trainers to learn the new focuses of the bretheren.  I got invited to go as well, so when I got a chance I slipped out of the offices and attended the seminars.  Its great, we´ve learned a ton about teaching with the spirit to people, not just spitting out lessons and how to utilize the Book of Mormon, prayer, and church attendance to help investigators gain a testimony. 

Love you guys!  Un besito.

Elder Hales