Circunvalacion 1 - Week #9

¡Hola Familia!

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!!! I completely forgot about your birthday, Mom!!! We've been running all over the place and for some strange reason it didn't even cross my mind. My bad!!! But anyways, Happy Late Birthday!!! You know it is kinda funny that a lot of people don't want to be recognized as getting older yet they still like the recognition of others when they do... I think it is either an everybody needs to remember or everybody needs to forget mentality, right??? I'm not making excuses!!! LOL.

Sounds like East Texas has been a hopping fun place recently. Sometimes I miss it a lot, and some days not so much... but it is and will always be home. But it does sound like work is going to be a bunch of fun with the changes and all. Is it a pretty big company that is coming in, Mom?

Also, Happy Pioneer Day!!! If I wasn't in the office with two missionaries from Utah I wouldn't even have remembered it was Pioneer Day today. But either way I'm glad the ward is finally deciding to do an activity to celebrate, since I don't remember one since when I was in Primary.

So the mission has been pretty crazy this week. We had Capacitación de Liderazgo (Leadership Training), Thursday and Friday for all of the leaders in the mission so the office was running around all over the place this week picking up food and all that jazz. Either way we came out of it with Subway on Thursday and Pizza Hut on Friday... not too bad if you ask me!!! It was pretty fun, but it has caused us to be running all over the place for a few other things.

As for the Zoo last week... Saturday in the zoo in Santiago, Chile in the middle of a 3 day weekend in the winter isn't the best of ideas! It turned out pretty fun but we didn't have a whole lot of time there with all of the people all over the place. The penguins didn't do much, the camel was gross, the polar bear was asleep, but the monkeys we up and active as usual... and communicating the whole time with the not so distant relatives! The whole zoo here is set up on the biggest volcano in Santiago, el Cerro San Cristobal, so the whole thing is either uphill or downhill... but it is really nice scenery and the exhibits aren't half-bad.

Our investigator that we have right now, Carlos, continues to progress. Sunday morning we gave him a call to wake him up for church and when we got to his house about 10 minutes til 10:00 he was ready to go with his Book of Mormon and everything. Turns out he had gotten home from work about 7:00 AM and had only slept for a little while and still got up to go to church. There are a couple of obstacles in the way of his progression but we are working on getting all of the kinks out before his baptismal date, the 15th of August. We continue being excited for him and his decision to accept the Gospel and follow Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! Lots of prayers are needed in his behalf as we work with him to help him overcome the obstacles in the way.

I'm thankful for every opportunity that I have to share this Gospel and to represent Jesus Christ! I love this work and the opportunity that we have to bring a few of our Heavenly Father's children back to him and to his presence. How great and marvellous it is! I hope all got to read and/or hear the letter I sent to the ward, sorry it was very similar to the one I sent to the family that would also be on the blog, but I felt like the points I made were a few things I wanted to share with everybody... I love this Church, I love the uniqueness that exists in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I know that this is the only place in the which this Gospel is found!!! Remember that, always remember that!!!

I love you all and miss you bunches, hope that everything keeps going great and that Ryah doesn't get too excited for school to start in just about a month!!! LOL.

¡Todo mi amor y cariño! ¡Abrazos y besitos a todos!

-- Élder Todd