Interviews with the Wagners and.....56 at church!

The only picture this week is one that Sister Wagner took when they were touring the mission doing interviews.  Here's what she said:

"These four work together in a little town south of where we were. They are doing a great job and we are so glad to have them there. And by the way, Mom, Elder J got his package!"

Now, from Ben.......

I am doing very well. The pants fit great, and are very comfortable and seem like they are going to hold up much better than the other ones as well.   I think that I have still been losing a little bit of weight, even though my eating habits are still not great, yet they are improving. The socks and the garments are great as well, and put that all together with the new shoes that I have I feel like a new man, haha. Thank you so much for the all of the stuff that you sent and also for the nice letter that you wrote to me, you have a rare gift of being able to write very sincerely and always with love! 

56 people came to church yesterday, 11 less actives and 3 investigators! The Munoz family did not, and Oscar did not either. The whole branch seems to be more excited after seeing how many people came to church today.

The three investigators were Karen, and Mosiah who are the kids of Alicia a less active member here, and Maria de Jesus, who is the friend of a less active member, Felicita Serrano, who also came to church for the first time yesterday. They are both quite old and walked to church, and it is a little ways away, they kinda scared me, haha. A member was going to pass by for them in his truck, but he got there late. They are awesome.

I told you about Hna. Victoria, her husband died a little more than a week ago, and this week, all of their family came to church, and they are many. I blessed the Sacrament yesterday for the first time in Spanish and so that was pretty cool. The Baltazar family came to church, Imelda and her daughter Yared, and Imelda´s sister in law Estela and Estela´s brother Alfonso. Juan Manuel came and gave a good talk about the Priesthood. Viridiana and all of her kids came to church as well, but she lost her job this week, so that stinks, and Eufemia an older Lady came as well. And of course the Castolo family came.  It is about as sure that they will come as it is that we will come to church, haha.

Yesterday was a totally awesome day, so many people at church, even though the branch president was not there.  He has to work about 1 or 2 sundays a month. Then, after church, visiting the members, it just seemed like everyone was kind´ve on a spiritual rush and it was great.  We always seem to have good lessons of Sundays, we were teaching with unity and it was just awesome, the kind of days where you have the experiences when people say things like, “wow, I wasn´t even going to be here today, but I had a feeling that I should be and now I know why” sort of a day.

The only tough thing is that our money for august has not arrived yet, it usually arrives a few days early. I have a little bit of food to eat, and Elder Hernandez is lending me some as well.

Mom, I’m excited for your new calling, it is kind´ve like getting called up to the bigs right! haha, before you were playing for the Bee´s and now the called you up to the Angel´s, haha! I am so excited for you and know that you will do a great job! Here, we have a relief society president and that is it, she does not have counselors.

Thanks for all of your prayers that I am sure you offered for me this past week, I really felt comfortable with my spanish and the middle of the week went much better, it was slow as far as lessons goes, but that is pretty normal, but the difference between this week and last week was that this week, we did not get discouraged and we able to see the blessings of not doing so.

We had good interviews with the Wagners on Tuesday.   Something cool that President Wagner shared with me in my interview with him, I thought I would share with you guys. We are trying to find principles in our Book of Mormon reading, for instance, "If I do this, this will happen, or I will receive this blessing." And in our interview he asked me about a principle that I had found in our reading, and I told him that one that I had found was, “They shall not be ashamed who wait on the Lord.”  And he asked me what I thought the scripture meant, and I told him, that if I wait patiently on the Lord, he will help me get through my trials and afflictions, and he told me, yes, and it also has another meaning.  He asked me where the word wait came from, and I told him that I did not know, and then he asked me, "well, what does a Waiter do, like in a restaurant", and then, I understood, he SERVES and I thought, “oh ok now I get it”, and I thought that was pretty cool, that waiting on the Lord, can also be interpreted as serving Him.

I did get your pictures, thanks.  I do not have my camera, but did not take any pictures this week anyways, I will try to take some this week. Another big event of this week, is that the birds had little babies again, and I love to watch it when their parents feed them, and they all are screaming and trying to get the food, while watching this morning, I realized what I am going to do when I grow up, I am going to be a BIRD WATCHER, yep that´s right a bird watcher, just watch them all day long. The Urdiales family has a ton of animals at their house and I have really come to like animals a lot more since I have been out here in Mexico.