Great Week!

Hey everyone! 

It was great to hear from you again, this week has been pretty crazy. It was the last week of the transfer and I´d have to say we ended the transfer on a pretty good note. Calls came last night and... I´m still here in Assomada with Elder Bunderson. For at least one more transfer. This is good though because we have a few people that we have been working with that we need to get baptized. Actually, our whole zone is staying the same except for one pair of Elders that are serving in Tarrafal, which is about an hour away from Assomada. Apparently there weren´t many major changes in the mission at all. This transfer has gone by so fast, it´s crazy to think I´ve already been in this country for six weeks. An elder in our zone goes home today and it seems really weird to see him leave. But I´ve still got a long time to go and a lot of work to do so I´m excited.

So the best part about the week... my first BAPTISM!! So A was baptized on Saturday, I sent a picture of him. It was really good and really cool to get a baptism in my first transfer. A picked me to do the baptism which was kind of cool. So we got him baptized and he´s doing really well. He´s pretty excited and so are we! We had a pretty busy week though, lots of lessons and appointments. We have this one investigator, M, who has been taught for a very long time. Since before I got here actually. He´s been taught pretty much everything and has accepted everything... except baptism. He said he wanted to wait so his whole family could be baptized together. This is great and it´s what we want, except for one problem. His family doesn´t want to talk to us!!! So we´ve been working with him for a long time, trying to help him make a decision. Then we went over a week where we didn´t see him. He didn´t come to church and he was never home for our appointments. We were almost ready to drop him but decided to pass one more time. He was finally there so we talked for about fifteen minutes about repentance. He had some questions from his studying. We explained that repentance involves a change in our life. Where we try to become more like Christ by changing our actions. This really seemed to make him think a lot and so we marked a date, gave him some stuff to study and then left. When we returned, he had done all of his studying. He told us that he realized now that he needs to make a change in his life. He wants to become more committed and come to church more regularily. He also told us that he is ready to be baptized! He came to the baptism on Saturday and to Church yesterday and we are going to help him get ready for baptism this week! We were so close to dropping him but I´m glad we didn´t. I know the Lord helped us in the end and that He knows the needs of our investigators better than we do. We just have to rely on His help and things are going to continue to improve.

Other than that, not a whole lot happened this week. We went to Praia on Thursday morning to have interviews with President Oliveira. That was a really good experience. He truly loves and cares for each one of us missionaries and I can´t imagine how much work it is for him and his wife to run this mission. The amount of travelling alone would be crazy!! He´s got to run zone conferences and interviews and visits and everytime he wants to go somewhere, he has to fly!! He´s an amazing man though and I feel very blessed to have him as my mission president. We talked about studying and how to make it so that we are learning from the Spirit and not just the words we are reading. He showed me a clip from Elder Bednar that talks about making questions and then focusing on those questions as you are studying. He said that if you do this, the Spirit will be able to teach you at a more personal and spiritual level that allows us to learn and grow more. It was really good.

Other than that, we got our one legged investigator to church yesterday. He is on crutches but he has a very hard time walking, even when he is on flat ground. I don´t think he leaves his house very much so he doesn´t have very much balance or strength to walk. He definitely can´t get around like Kiersten´s volleyball coach. But, we got him out of the house, carried him up the hill and got him a taxi. It was 300 CVE to get him to and from church and it involved some work but he really enjoyed it. The only problem is we don´t know what will happen when we leave. So we´ve got to figure something out. ´But I´m doing really well. I´m really excited for this next transfer and I think we´re going to do some great work here in Assomada over the next two weeks. I love you all and look forward to hearing from you every week!