week 56

Hey! This week went pretty alright. We were able to put a new fecha with a little girl that the branch gave us, so I thought that was a pretty happy thing! This is a picture in front of her house, she is standing closest to me in the white.

Some members were nice enough to invite us to their little baby's one year old birthday party. The main celebration is eating caldo. They don't have cake, maybe they just don't like it, but I think it is more that they can't afford it. Serving here has made me realize how good we have it. Like we have carpet... man do I miss carpet.

There is this really nice hermana (sister, or woman at church) that leads the choir, and she invites us to dinner every Sunday. They have some money, so it is like being in the states again there with how the house and kitchen are set up and everything. It feels really weird.

The fechas we had scheduled for this week were kind of frustrating because they just didn't show up to their own baptisms. We were supposed to have three, the older lady that we have been working with forever, and then a mother and her daughter both named Paulina. They showed up to church on their own so we met them there and started visiting, they seemed really solid, so I'm not really sure what happened there. We will have to see what is up with that this week. If everything goes well we should have at least three or four baptisms for October, so that will be exciting. Also we started doing Family Home Evening with a family every Monday night because the dad is menos activo (less active, doesn't come to church regularly) and his wife wants us to visit him a lot.

I went on divisions with the new elder, Elder Zavala, he is a cool guy and we had a good time. Mom asked for my biggest adventure this week... it was probably hiking to the Mirador (a place really high and really flippin far away.) That was kind of a treat. We went two days in a row to prepare our fechas and to take Elder Bos to do interviews. These pictures are of Elder Smart and me almost at the top. 

Today we are in Coban. We got here and Elder Smart got a chest x-ray. He has been coughing a lot at night so they were worried he had a chest thing, but he is fine. Then we did our numbers for the month and turned those in. Next we ate some lunch at pizza hut, it was pretty dang good. Now we will write for like half an hour and then go get ready for our meeting. We will sleep here at the APs tonight, they have a bigger place, so that should be fun. They will be driving us back to our area tomorrow so we don't have to take the bus. They have a Frontier, it is good enough to handle the drive to the Polochic haha.

Oh also, don't send any more packages until I can tell you how. The mail system is like completely messed up apparently, and probably lost that package you mailed a month ago. So huge bummer there. There is still some hope, just not a lot from what it sounds like. Maybe it will show up like four months from now. I hope something is worked out before Christmas, but we will have to see...if not it would be a bummer but I would survive.

Thanks for the sports updates, Dad. It's good to hear some good things are happening for Manson. I can't believe Eric Weddle plays for the Baltimore Ravens now. THAT'S NOT GOOD. Now I have to stop cheering for the Chargers! I only liked the Chargers for him haha.

My spiritual experience this week comes from yesterday (Sunday.) I was pretty frustrated after the whole baptism episode with people not showing up so I kind of went to church with a bad attitude. But then after the opening prayer I looked up and saw one of our converts, I don't know if you remember Henry? He was sitting at the Sacrament table ready to bless the Sacrament for the first time! And then to top it all off he got a calling working with the young men. I just got so happy at that moment. It felt like one of the little blessings I just had to look for. Blessings are all around us if we just open our eyes.

Well, I love all of you, have a good week!

Love, Elder Toolson