Elder Matt Dial

March 19, 2012

Hello everyone,

So Transfers were this week and I'm staying another....big suprise. This week Elder McGill and I had a decent one. We taught some lessons and found some new investigators but haven't really seen any progress until Sunday. Jose Casarrubia (we say Cacarrubia) finally came to church with his cousins! We picked up about 18 new investigators this transfer and none have come to church....until Sunday. So a big ol 1 on the progressing investigators but we're still makin progress with the teaching pool.

Well Cielo's family (the family of 7 we found) is doing quite well. We had a lesson and we watched the Restoration movie and the spirit was so strong. We talked about it, and a family friend was there and she started bashing on her own church talking about how they don't do anything and how we do stuff to build our faith and all that good stuff.

I wish sometimes as being a missionary you had the keys to take away someone's agency, but unfortunately....God can't even do that. I have done a lot of studying this past week in talks and the scriptures and love that in those 3 precious hours of studies in the morning we're God's investigators and it's our turn to be enlightened. It's so weird that 19-22 year old boys can entertain themselves and find solace in the scriptures, when half of the world has never read out of the Bible.

Elder Santos from Uruguay, is training a guy named Elder Hussy...or something like that. We've decided that Elder McGill is going to act like he doesn’t speak any English and is going to speak in only Spanish. Elder McGill is fluent in both, and we're going to try to pull it off as long as we can.

A family from West Jordan just moved into our ward and went to church here for the first time, and was appalled for the lack of a better word at how different the ward is run outside of Utah. Utah wards are basically well-oiled machines. Fellowshipping isn't a problem; less-active work is done by the ward, Home teaching is done by the home teachers not the missionaries, and basically just DONE RIGHT. Wards here (ESPECIALLY SPANISH WARDS) are run more like we change the oil two thousand miles AFTER the engine light comes on.....it's just different. The ward I'm in right now is probably the most organized Spanish ward in the mission, and it still has a lot of work.

Well the time has come for us to part. Love you and hope ya have a good week.

-Elder Dial

p.s. I got the coupon and the St Pattys day package. The package was great. I always love getting packages. Bad news.....I have misplaced my camera. When I moved apartments and got transferred into Jurupa it got misplaced somewhere and is nowhere to be found. I'm still in the process looking for it but it's looking a little slim...