Brace Yourselves! It's a Long One!‏

Dear family and friends,

 

I cannot fully express the joy I feel from hearing from all of you. It feels great to hear your voices, if only through writing. Each passing week feels slow yet satisfying mostly. I'm sorry that I freaked you all out about being dehydrated. Don't worry I'm better now. I have good news about some things and bad news about others.

 

Thursday is when Elder Mortimer (my trainer) and I have our weekly planning session. In our last weekly planning session we realized that we were going to be baptizing weekly in January! Man I was so pumped up for that! It felt incredible! However Satan has been pushing very hard and since that time that dream has been blown out of the water. On that very same night one of our investigators with a baptismal date in January said "I don't want to do it anymore," especially after she'd committed herself the night before. Super lame! Then to make matters worse the recent converts that the girl was living with (they were her cousins) got into a big dramatic argument with her right in front of us! The Spirit took off and I left the place feeling down.

 

Now here's the really freaky part: I got really sick on the same night all this happened. Really sick. Sicker than I've ever been in my life. (Now I don't want anyone to freak out about me. I'm 100% better since then which is why I'm telling all of you about it. Breathe easily if you need to) I couldn't work at all on Friday and I thought I wouldn't be able to work on Saturday, but the Lord strengthened me. While I was sick Sister Connolly waited on me hand and foot. When you all have a chance I would like you all to thank her for taking care of me. She fed me the things that would make me feel better, did my laundry and even called the other elders every half hour and told them about my condition. I made sure to thank her personally but that simply won't do. If you have any ideas about ways I could properly show my appreciation I would be glad to hear them.

 

Tomorrow we have splits with the Spanish Elders again only this time one of the Spanish Elders (Elder Posada who's from Colorado) will be exchanging with me. Then on Wednesday I'll be exchanging with the zone leaders. I'll be taking over the area for two days! We'll see if Elder Mortimer has taught me well.

 

Back to the baptismal topic we have a baptism coming up this Saturday! Her name is Austin (known as "Aussie", her mom really wanted a boy) Marie Carter. She's 14 years old and a very cheerful girl. She used to be very shy but since that time she's really opened up and it's awesome to see how the Gospel's blessed her life. I'll make sure to take pictures.

 

On Monday we had an awesome FHE in a member's home! We brought this family that we're teaching with us, the Valdez family, and they loved it! We committed Francis, the mother, to baptism on January 8th! We extended the same commitment to her daughters but they said no. They're taking this very slowly which is something we have to work on since they're mother is so gung-ho about it. The father, Edson, likes what we're teaching them too but he's never home since he's always working. They all came to church though since it's a big step. Right now we're praying about whether to just baptize Sister Valdez alone or wait until the rest of the family has committed as well. If we wait for the rest of the family then that means the date will need to be pushed back. At this point I'm freaking out that we won't be baptizing anybody on January!

 

So Grandma Boothe and Dad asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I've come up with a small list. I never feel like I want much and considering that I have everything I need in abundance I'm not surprised that this list will be very small:

 

1) Ties. My favorite colors are orange and darker shades of blue. Remember no logos or insignias.

2) CD's. Motab, EFY, hymn arrangements. That's it. Feel free to burn CD's and make copies for me.

3) Pants/sweaters. I don't have very much warm clothing.

4) Baked goodies. I love snickers, Reese's Pieces (not Reese's cups) cookies and fudge. My favorite kinds of cookies are chocolate chip and pumpkin cookies.

 

Oh and just to reiterate don't feel bad about e-mailing. Yes I love getting mail (and I frequently get excited about it everyday) but there's nothing wrong about e-mails. What matters most to me is that I'm hearing from the people I love the most.

 

With deep love from,

Elder Boothe