One year down!

Ha iniciado la cuenta regresiva. Reconozco que sí se siente bastante diferente que el primer año. Ya falta menos de lo que he logrado. Todos los días están mas cortos.

I'm glad the family is all doing well. I can't wait to see you all again in less than a year.

I'm glad I stuck through the first year of my mission, too. I totally understand why Dad said he has at least an automatic increased respect for any person who is an RM.  Missionaries deal with so much crap. Every day. But you just learn to do the best with what you've got. I realize life is kind of the same, so you really do learn more than anything street smarts in the mission that you couldn't have learned in any other way.

As to my return date, that's still up in the air. I think it will either be 19 March or 30 April. Most likely 30 April, but I won't know until November.

Well, this week was one of my favorites of the mission. I hit my year mark, a day I thought would never come. We had a baptism, activated three inactive families, brought seven investigators to church, and found the coolest most golden investigator I have ever met. The Lord is blessing me more than I deserve. One thing I can say is my own efforts honestly had nothing to do with those blessings. I do what the Lord asks of me, and even though the blessings aren't always direct effects of those efforts, the Lord always finds the way to bless us. For example, this week we baptized on Friday. Right after the baptism, my companion and I stayed to clean up the font and so forth. All of a sudden somebody called me. ''¿Ya me puedo ir? Limpié la cocina.'' I turned to see a 15 year old youth with his hair spiked up the cool Mexican way they do. I asked him who he was and he said his name is O and his grandma (an active member) had sent him to do her cleanup part of the chapel because she couldn't make it. We started teaching him right away and he asked us if we could baptize him. Basically his whole family are members and we had just never found him among them before. My companion and I didn’t find him by any technique or finding method at all. However, we do obey all week long all the rules, so the Lord put a huge blessing right into our laps.

My birthday is going to be an amazing one. Sister Marissa has offered to get me pizzas and chocolate fountain and a piñata. 

Alright, I'll try to call you at some hour during the day on Friday. We'll see. But for sure Saturday at 3:30 I will be calling you guys from Skype!

A baptism of a new member.  She is awesome.

The cutest little girl in the world.

Cinco de Mayo.  I sort of wish I was still in Puebla where the holiday is such a big deal.  Here it is celebrated with a parade and gathering, but it seems that even further east in Mexico, people don't really care about it.