Aguilar Familia. Edwin, Aurora and her parents.
A wonderful day. Note the halo over Aurora.
Elders McElvain and Sanchez and all of the rest of us.
Birthday smiles.
Troubador.
Dad with the Birthday girls.
Niko the watchdog.
More effective security.
We´re well covered.It’s hard to find the words to express how we feel. We love this missionary work, and we miss our family, but we know of the two feelings the most important, right now, is the first. The time is passing so quickly, and we feel that we are progressing very slowly. Our very first baptism a year ago was a thrill, but we were only involved in the teaching in a very limited way. We found the couple, but the elders did most of the teaching, and all we were able to do was to bear our testimonies, and pass by each day to offer encouragement or leave off an article from the Ensign or a pamphlet. Now, almost a year to the day after I baptized Eduardo and his wife Angelica was baptized also, we witnessed the baptism of the mother of an inactive 14 year old young man who had been baptized by his grandfather six years ago. This young man, Edwin, has just recently received the priesthood of Aaron and was ordained to the office of a Teacher. He is progressing very nicely, and he wants to serve a mission. This summer he is going out on splits with the full time missionaries.
His mother was baptized by her father last Saturday, after we spent four weeks teaching her all by ourselves in Spanish. This is a major hurdle for us even though she had been taught by her father, she still had to be taught to seek for and find her own testimony of the truthfulness of the restoration. Her son Edwin was there with her when we taught, and he helped us when we got stuck with communication problems. He understands a little English and he helped us with our Spanish a little, but we basically taught her all the discussions on our own, and she passed the baptism questions with flying colors.
The work has its high points and low points, but it is all good. We are witnessing the growth of the church, in the fast growing part of the world. Last week the ward we served in for our first year, was joined back to its sister ward and the two were divided into three. This week the same thing happened in our present ward and its sister ward. We now have three wards in our chapel, and there are three wards in our old chapel. I feel certain that the Stake we are serving in will grow into two or three stakes in this next decade. Both chapels had just two wards each last year at this time.
The pictures are of the Aguilar family and the District leaders. All the elders in the zone were very happy that we had finally managed to find, teach, and baptize someone all on our own. We are happy too, but we feel that it has taken us too long to reach this level, and the time is passing far too quickly, Mom just celebrated her second birthday in the mission field, which means she won’t have another `til after we get home. I slipped in a few pictures of our little celebration, with some friends, the Garcia family, whose daughter turned sixteen on the 19th. They took us to a very fancy restaurant. I’m also including a picture of Niko a 3 month old watch dog they wanted to give us. We politely turned them down, and Michelle the birthday girl was secretly happy about that. Mom wanted a security door instead of Niko,I can’t imagine why. We had fun for an hour or so. Then off to the baptism of Aurora., which was a birthday treat for mom also; she loves Aurora.
We are grateful to God to be called to serve and grateful to all of our family at home for the privilege of serving in this mission. We feel that this mission is the best thing that we have done in the way of service in the church. We look forward to more success in finding, preaching, teaching, and baptizing those who have been prepared to receive of the fullness of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and when we return home we hope it is with a feeling that we did the very best we were able to do, and that we found everyone we were sent her to find.
We have compiled a list of all the people in Mexico that we never want to forget, and presently it is more than a page long and by the end of our mission I’m sure it will be two or three pages. These people here will always be special to us.
We miss you all, and we are looking forward to next Memorial Day by Corinne and Cordell’s pool in Boise. No! We’re not TRUNKEY, just a little homesick.
Love Dad/Grandpa
