The blog of me: September 6, 2010

Howdy y'all!

I guess if there's more than one person reading this it would be, ''Howdy all y'all!'' Haha, one of the many great things I learned while living in Virginia.

You're always such a busy little bee, mom! But I guess that's better than having nothing to do, right? I love being busy and learning new things, so keep on keepin' on I say. Just don't lose too much family time!

Alrighty, let's see, what's new in the life of Elder Vincent:

Today Elder Heiser and I took a trip up to Cabrero to visit, it was so cool to be able to see some of the people again! We had breakfast at Freddy's house and then went to see another family that is basically my Chilean family. Only the mom, Jaqueline, was there, so that was a little bit of a bummer, but I was really happy to see her. It was very...nostalgic...being back in my greenyville again. I literally felt bigger! Haha. Kind of like when you go back to a place where you grew up as a kid or something - Cabrero seemed pretty small to me, like I had been so much younger when I was there before.

The other day I saw something pretty interesting. We were talking to this guy and asked him if we could come back to meet his family and share a message about Christ, and he said no, I already know everything and I don't really need anything else. And ironically he had a shirt on that said (in english), ''Why do people with closed minds always open their mouths?'' Haha, so I thought that was pretty funny.

Elder Heiser and I are working ourselves to death here! And the Lord is really blessing us for it - this last Sunday we finished up with five baptismal dates, four of which are for September and then one more in October. The people here in Los Angeles are amazing - I'm loving this city. There's this one lady named Marianela that has decided to completely change her life to be able to do live in harmony with the gospel and get baptized. She stopped smoking, has decided to go to churtch every week and is telling her boyfriend that they can't live together anymore. She's going to kick him out! Haha. So she's got a date for the 16th of October. We're teaching a family of three named Angela (the mom) and her two children Gonzalo and Krishna. They have a baptismal date planned for the 17th of September, but it miiiight change. We'll have to figure that out this week. And then the other for the 17th of this month is a girl named Carolina who had actually shared with missionaries before and had gone to church and institute (she's 19). Before she had been going to church with one of her friends, and he got baptized, so she thought she was just doing it for him and decided that wasn't right. So she kind of stopped going to church, but then she said she started thinking that she needed to go back, and that SAME day we passed by to see her (one of the ward councelors gave us the reference a day or two before). So she's really excited to be sharing with us again and her mom is actually participating now as well - she hadn't been doing that before; miracles just happen every day! Gotta love this :) We have plenty more people that we're teaching that don't have baptismal dates yet, but I'm sure they will soon enough.

I think the last bunch of letters I sent out while I was in Curanilahue got lost in the mail, so here's a shout-out to all of the people who should have recieved letters:

Margot Crandall
Jon Baranowski
Rachel King
Serena Lever
Chauri Thurston
Sara McGhie

I may have forgotten a name...or not...but if each of those people could let me or my parents know if you got the letter or not so that I know if I should write another one or not that would be great. If you've already done so don't worry about it - I already know, haha.

The other night we watched Finding Faith in Christ with a family...and it made me feel so much at home - seeing the life of Christ and pondering about it. Christ lives...I know that. He loves me...I know that too. The more one studies the more one comes to realize the divinity of His plan. I encourage you all to really STUDY the scriptures and pray about it. Study without prayer is like going swimming without water (3 Nephi 26:8-10).

Well, I believe that's it for this week. I love and miss you all very much and am constantly praying for you all. This is the Lord's work, there is not a single doubt in my entire being of that. I encourage you all to increase your faith in Christ and I promise you will find things you didn't know and feel things you've never felt.