March 7, 2011

This week has definitely been better. I've just been so stressed lately with how things have been going but now that I'm feeling good and i'm back out i'm good. Your letter made me SO happy! i'm so excited that our ward finally loves missionary work. There is so much power and blessings that come to a ward when they feel the fire of missionary work. I can't even tell you how much I love it! I truly love missionary work. I love serving in the YSA branch and it has become my home. The idea of ever being part of a YSA branch scares me to death! Good thing i'm just the missionary! I have met so many wonderful people and some of my very best friends are here in Miami. I will be so sad when it comes time to leave them. I'm really hoping things go as planned and I stay in this branch for the rest of my mission. The members are finally starting to love the work and I LOVE the members. This week we have another general authority coming. It seems like they're here weekly. Pretty much everything for the temple has been passed and they are just waiting for some last minute things. I'm really hoping the ground breaking is before I get home. This week we have found a few new people to teach and i'm really hoping they progress. The two that we have that are already progressing are P and J. We have taught p since august and she has had several manifestations that this is the true church and a dream about baptism and still won't commit. She's killin me! For the life of me I don't know what is holding her back. She has grown up catholic and I think just refuses to change. I had her e-mail Crystal a few times and that helped but there is still something else. I pray so much to know how to help her but I just don't know. J is one that really wanted to be baptized. Gave up addictions to drugs, alcohol, and smoking and then found out he couldn't get baptized because he was on parole. After that he went the complete opposite direction and got back into everything. He turned super cold and was really mean. About a week ago he showed up to the church for institute and said he got off parole. I asked to meet with him and he was like "not now, maybe another day, we'll see." so I told him we needed to be quieter because we were in the hall and convinced him to go into another room. We proceeded to teach him a lesson without him knowing. He wants the change but without the work and satan has a really strong hold on him. We are really trying to help him change. Other than that we're just finding more people.