Hiking, Edward, and Spanglish

Dear family and friends,

        The highlight of my week is that WE HAD A BAPTISM! BOMBA DIGUIDAD ABUELA! That's Bomb diggity translated into Spanish. I wonder how Ryan feels about this. I figure that he'd appreciate it since it's Spanish translation. The zone leaders and I have a lot of fun with Spanish and I say "Bomb diggity" a lot so we had some more fun.

        Anyway the investigator we baptized is Edward Bailon who is the son and brother of the first two investigators that I've baptized in this area. He's very shy and very soft spoken but he's sincere and he has a heart full of gold once you get to know him. He initally avoided the missionaries who taught his dad and when we first started teaching him back in December it was hard getting him to open up to us. It's been amazing watching him open up to us and seeing that glow about him. The gospel has truly changed his life and what's better is that he can see it. The guy who baptized him is his home teacher, Noel, who is a recent convert of about 5 months. Getting his baptism organized was extremely stressful but once it happened it happened. Satan threw a lot of last minute obstacles at us (he's good at that). What was even cooler is that during priesthood meeting the next day Brother Santiago, the second counselor in the bishopric, asked Edward to give his conversion story to everyone and in it he thanked me and Elder Adona "for being patient with him". He also talked about the huge change this has made in his life. It was such a spiritual experience and it's freakishly awesome! I'll never forget that moment, even if I don't recollect everything he said exactly.

       Right before e-mailing everyone I had a zone activity which involved hiking up to a mountain and having a testimony meeting. It was very fun and I enjoyed it. The testimony meeting was spiritual, especially Elder Sheet's testimony on our purpose as missionaries. I took three videos of that experience. I wish I knew how to upload them.

     So this upcoming transfer is coming to an end soon and one of the zone leaders that I live with is going home. I'm going to miss that guy a lot! I've become rather attached to the missionaries in this zone and we've had a lot of fun together. It's going to be sad having to say good-bye to him. Another reason why I'm saying this is that next week's e-mail will come on Tuesday, instead of Monday.

Love,

Elder Boothe