Week 21 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

That is pretty cool that the Haeggadorn's have been out and about, South Africa must have been pretty cool.

Ward conference was amazing, we only had 95 people there, not quite the 120 we were hoping for but it was better than it could have been. Our stake president gave a super good talk about the parable of the good Samaritan, he talked about how we like to see ourselves as the good Samaritan and that we need to help others who have been "attacked". What he said was that it was more applicable if we put ourselves in the place of the man who was attacked by thieves and that it is in fact Jesus Christ who is our good Samaritan. He then talked about how through his atonement Jesus allows us to be healed just like in the parable when the Samaritan brought the man to the inn. He talked about how the church is the inn and when we go to church we are healed. He also said that there are 5 things that we can do to help ourselves and our families they are:

1.Have Family Home Evening 

2.Pray as a family every day

3.Read the scriptures as a family every day

4.Pray personally every day

5.Read the scriptures personally every day

I though it was a super good talk and the stake president is just a super cool and spiritual guy. The 2nd and 3rd hour they taught about Galatians 5:16 and about how the flesh and the spirit always work against each other and how it is up to us to choose to follow the Spirit and "Walk with God in the Spirit" It was a super good conference.

Not much happened this week. So here are the highlights:

Monday:

Eloy took us to Mambo's again for lunch, I had the salmon again, it was still good, so I can't complain.

We got haircuts and we also heard that President Salmond (the stake president) wanted 120 at ward conference.

Tuesday:

6 Months mark, yay. We were on an exchange and I was with Elder Agnello, who has been out a little over a year, he is from Brigham City Utah. We had a good time, we had lunch with a member, which was delicious. Then for the rest of the day we visited members with Bishop to try and get as many people to hear about ward conference as possible.

Wednesday:

We had interviews with President Torres so we were doing that until about 1:00. He said my Spanish was sounding really good, that was nice to hear. We had dinner with the Rivera family and had a good chat with them. Th loey always have doctrine questions for us so it is always interesting hearing what they have to ask. After dinner we went to the church for family history and a bunch of people went on visits to invite members to the ward conference. I was mainly helping the ward clerk move records out of our ward, that was entertaining.

Thursday:

We had lunch with Brother Villalpando (I call him Bilbito because he reminds me of a mexican version of Bilbo Baggins from Lord of the Rings) After that we visited another member and she also fed us food, we had some delicious flautas (taquitos) so we were super full and happy. We then went and visited a member to invite him to the ward conference, he wasn't even there. Right as we got to his house this lady called the cops on their dog because it tried to "bite" her kids. So the cops came, we told the police we didn't see anything, which we didn't, so they said we could go, it was pretty entertaining. To end the night we got shakes from whataburger, and those are some good shakes.

Friday:

We had a Mexican Burger for lunch, we went and visited some people and had dinner with the Hernandez family. We had quesadillas with mashed potato on the inside with the cheese, they were pretty good. We also did some finding late at night and met like 3 or 4 people who sounded pretty cool.

Saturday:

We did some more visiting of members, at 3 our new elders quorum president was having a bbq so he invited us over and we had some pollo asado (grilled chicken) which was delicious. We then joined him and 1 of his counselors for a mini presidency meeting, which was pretty good. We tried visiting some more people and to finish off the night we had dinner with the relief society president in our ward, we had some tasty corn, rice and enchiladas.

Sunday:

We had ward conference which I already talked about. We had dinner with the Rivera family again and talked about ward conference. After that we visited some people that didn't show up but nobody was home so that was kind of disappointing. We visited with the seminary teacher and talked with her and her daughter about the Galatians scripture that we talked about during 2nd and 3rd hour. That was about it.

That was the week, hope all is well back at home. Remember to do the basics because those are what matter the most.

Until next week

Love

Elder Goodbaudy