Busy with the Work of the Lord

Letter #70
December 29, 2104
Area: Trinity River
Companion: Gamez

Hey guys, I hope you all had a great Christmas and will have a great New Years! It sounds like most of you had a good week, this last week went well for me as well, but it was different than a normal week. We had Christmas Eve and Christmas day of course, but we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders from Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday afternoon, and also exchanges with our District Leader, Elder Perry, on Saturday. Sadly we weren't able to visit/teach some less-active members, as well as some investigators that we have been teaching. On Saturday though, as I was on exchanges with Elder Perry, we were able to find the Chavez family at home, as well as 3 other families: Maria Mata and her sons, Kenny and Leo Zuniga, and Carlos Mendoza.  We were able to teach them all!

We needed to talk with the Chavez family because they are trying to work towards baptism. We needed to specifically clarify some things about the Word of Wisdom because Ernesto had started drinking Decaffeinated Coffee every so often.  He misunderstood what a member had said, so we explained that even decaffeinated works against the Word of Wisdom. We explained to him that we might not understand all of the reasons, but we shouldn't drink any form of coffee, and it seems like they understood and they agreed to doing that. They sadly missed church again, so we are going to figure out why, and we the Escobar family is back in town, which is good because they are going to be able to help with the whole marriage thing.

Elder Gamez was able to talk with Maria Mata on exchanges with Elder Brewer.  She has been struggling, but the visits always help her.  I also tried stopping by with Elder Perry, but she was asleep.  Her sons were there and were willing to talk with us. We taught them about the Plan of Salvation because they had some questions and that is what they were interested in at that time. We also found out that her older son, Guadalupe, knows 2 of the young men in the branch! We have plans to bring them to lessons with us in order to help the sons learn from their own friends. In fact one of his best friends is Kenny Zuniga, so we went over and talked with Kenny after teaching Guadalupe and his brother, Luis, and asked him if he would be willing to help us teach his friend.

I hope you all have a great week and a happy New Years holiday!

Elder Stanley Scott Dye