November 21, 2011

Hola familia,
I’m really happy to have heard from all of you. Sounds like everything is going real well and dang i got some cute nieces and nephews! Thanks for the pictures. They are fantastic. Tiffany your baby is like a blob of gushy awesomeness and Brynlee is huge!!!! and Nicole, congratulations on the new creature! I totally feel you on the cold thing dad. As i write it is raining pitchforks outside. Saturday, Sunday, and today it rained.... Once again, rain on the weekend only. How is it with mom back in house? Well i feel like i have left this week a better person. This last week was difficult I’m not going to lie. It was hard and i was pretty disanimated by Thursday. We lost over half of our investigators. The familia de la cruz seem a little disanimated too. This last week we didn’t have the chance to share with them... not once. The father is working till 9 every night and the wife seems to be leaving house alot more and then Saturday came and her brother got in a moto accident and they have been in the hospital all weekend so they did not go to church again. I love them i really do, and my comp and I have been trying everything with them.  It just isn’t working out! Satan is doing more work against this familia then almost any other that i have had in my mission. I was very sad Sunday night, and then we went to a members house to drop of our dirty clothes, and we sat down and started talking with the dad for a second and i was telling what was happening with them.  He told me something that really hit me hard. He told me´´elder shaw if you are following the rules and doing everything you can for this familia and it still not working out it is because it is a trail of your faith.  God is trying you too (mosiah 23 god sees fit to chastise to try our faith). I was really struggling with that and then it made sense. It’s me that has the little faith. This last week was zone conference and the president talk alot on applying the attributes of Christ.  That day after we left i came out with a better determination to do better, I now follow the rules more closely. It’s so easy to justify something but we need to accept the commandments like they are. We are working very hard with the familia de la cruz and they will get baptized i know that much it’s just a matter if i will be able to the see the baptism or not. This last week we were blessed with a baptism also. Her name is bienvendia. She is wicked awesome! She is the sister of member. She has about 30 years with one kid but doesn’t have a husband. She received an answer about baptism through a dream, and is very faithful. She has a great desire to share the gospel with everybody! Her brother in law baptized her and when she went under he slipped and fell in a little and then he grabbed her by the neck and lifter her out. It was very funny and i had to try so hard not to laugh cause i was a witness at the door. A funny note a crazy man chased us for about 3 minutes. We were walking very fast and realized that he started to chase us. He eventually caught up to us which surprised me but then continued to give us candy that he had made... it was very funny. I almost ate it but my comp advised me otherwise. Keep going strong and thank for the letters. i love you all
 elder shaw