We had transfers this week! I´m still in Ojo de Agua, but I have a new
companion. His name is Elder Flores, he has 20 months in the mission.
He´s from El Salvador, and he was converted a year before he came out
on the mission. I think it will be great to have his perspective as a
missionary, because he already knows what it is like to be an
investigator. He has a lot of ideas, I hope they help out this area.

So we are low on progressing investigators. Everybody is willing to
listen, but nobody really seems interested in changing anything in
their lives. They´ve got their church a couple houses away, it
preaches about the same god, so why not go there.

Victor seems really motivated and interested, but we´ve been teaching
him for almost 4 weeks now and he hasn´t been to church once.
Ana has been to church twice, but she is never home, so we never have
the opportunity to teach her. But we did challenge her to be baptized
and she seems hesitant, so we are going to focus on her doubts.

Today we´re in Zamorano and we played soccer on a mini caged field. Of
the three months I´ve been here and have been playing soccer, today I got
my first goal.  Needless to say, I´m not very good at soccer yet.  But it´s
still fun.

That´s all for this week!
Elder Stone

We had interviews with President Hernandez this week. He came to Ojo
de Agua and we spent a good chunk of the morning there. It was kind of
funny because the first interview of the day took at least an hour.
Then almost every one after that was about 10 minutes or less. Plus a
blow to my confidence, at the end of our interview he had me close
with a pray and as I was nearing the end I said "We give thee thanks
for thy son Jesus Christ" and President said "Amen" when really I was
going to say "and his atonement" but I guess I finished my prayer.

Yesterday I had to give my third talk in the Branch. I hate to give talks
in English, and now they want me to do it in Spanish. Plus they
tell me to take up 20 minutes.  I mean I know if I write it all out and
use the internet I can do it in English, but I neither have the
time nor the resources here, so they turn out to be 10 minutes tops.

We just started teaching the neighbor of Allan and Vanessa.  I kid you
not, he looks just like the Latin version of the old man from the movie "UP".
I really want to send pictures.  It is truly funny, and Elder Lopez and I laugh
about it almost every time we visit.

Thats all for this week, thanks for all the support.

Elder Stone

Hey Everyone!

This week I may have had the coolest baptism that I will have all my
mission. Allan and Vanessa were baptized Saturday. Not only did we
baptize a family, but we did it in a river! It was cool, Allan said he wanted
to follow more of the example of Christ. So Elder Lopez baptized Allan
and I baptized Vanessa. I´m still not very good at explaining the
procedure, so after stumbling through the prayer I was lowering her in, but
she didn´t close her mouth and started laughing, so right before I put
her under I had to stop. So we had to do it again, but the second time
the prayer went well and I lowered her into the water with her mouth
closed ha. It was also cool because we planned for 25 people and
exactly 25 came! Usually they only get about 8 at the baptisms, but
with the river being closer than driving all the way to the Villa SF
it was easier for everyone to attend.

We do have another perspective family. Victor is the father and he
seems really positive, but it´s really hard to get him to church. He
always says that he will attend, but he hasn´t the past two weeks.
His son, Ariel, comes everyone once in awhile with his member grandparents.
The problem with that is that his grandparents are less active members.
It will take some work. We´re always searching for families.

Nothing else this week.

Love ya!

Elder Stone

This week has been really interesting. I have visited almost the entire
zone and half of it this week alone. Tuesday I went on divisions to
Yuscaron for a couple of hours. That was a pretty cool experience, it looks
like a cool little town, but the attendence at church on the 25th was 7,
including the President and the two missionaries. On Thursday I went to the
Villa of San Francisco. Again the town seems like it would be pretty cool.
And then Friday I went to Zamorano. I don't care for it much, except they
do have a university there, so there are people from all over, including
some from the US.

Other than those exchanges nothing really happened this week. We received several
referals Saturday and Sunday but have yet to contact them. We have been
looking for families still. It's really hard because no one bothers to get
married. When we do find a family, then it will be so much better to teach them,
because they will support each other and are more likely to remain active.
I think we are going to start focusing on part member families.
Yesterday we had 71 members at church! That is the most we' ve had since
I've been here.  Plus one member brought her nonmember husband and another
her nonmember boyfriend. We are going to try to contact them and see if
we can help them out. This week is short.

Thanks for the support! Love ya!
Elder Stone

Happy New Years!

Happy New Years!

So this was a pretty interesting week. We are a couple of Mormon
Missionaries living in the rental home of an Episcopalian Pastor with
Evangelical neighbors. Every once in a while all the branches of the
Evangelical churches of Ojo de Agua get together and have some sort of
Stake Conference or something. And it turned out that this week our
neighbors got to host it. It is really interesting to listen to the
way they worship, but to each their own. The bad part of this is
that they didn't start until 8 at night and didn't end until about
Midnight. Needless to say we did not sleep very well.
Then the following day was New Years Eve. We started the next day as
usual, but when the night came we visited some members and we
celebrated up until 9:00 ish and then went home. I celebrated the new
year falling asleep around 10:30 ish and waking up at Midnight to the
thousands of firecrackers and fireworks going off in Ojo de Agua.
Boy I love our neighbors!
We had our dinner of the new year in the branch this week. We had a
really good turn out, too bad they basically only come for the food.
But we met about 3 new investigators which was really cool. I hope
that we will be able to continue meeting with them.
This week we also met a member of 16 years that has been
inactive for about 15 years. It's one of those sad situations where
once the missionaries left she didn't really have any support so she
just stopped going. But she was super welcoming and very nice and we
are going to see if we can help her get back to church.
Allan and Vanessa are still progressing. They both accepted the
baptismal date of January 14th, so hopefully all goes well and we are
able to help them in their eternal progression. We spent part of New
Years Eve with them, and we still continually visit them almost every
day.
Even though yesterday was New Years Day we had a decent turn out for
church, granted we started 20 minutes late because at 9 we had about 7
members including us two missionaries and the branch president. But we
turned out to have about 38 members, a couple of less actives came and
we had 5 investigators.
That's it for this week!

Elder Stone