Week 17 - We now have 4 baptism dates!

"All God has to work with is imperfection." - we all suck, but God understands.

Anyways, what's up ya'll!

This past week absolutely fleew by. Me and E. Dayley were planning one day and we just realized that we're already started our FOURTH week in this transfer...we joked around 'cause we didn't think it really was....but holy crap, we're halfway through this transfer.

This past week was awesome and we now have 4 baptism dates! We've been greatly blessed. Yesterday was fast sunday, which are always a little bit of a struggle, but I asked to get me through it and it was an awesome day. Sister Hallet and Hale gave us a referral to two girls who are 18 and 15 who had a baptism date set and are so stoked to get dunked! We haven't been able to see them at their house (having a car half the time doesn't help either) but we should get those two dates soon as well! Yesterday, we've been working with a part member family, the Lowell's. AWESOME people. Bro. Lowell is a member but doesn't hold the priesthood and Sister Lowell is a lifelong catholic. We've been working with them for 2-3 months now, and they both stayed the whole block at church yesterday. SICK. After Gospel Principles class, Bro. Lowell came up to me and put his arm around me, grabbed me and looked at me and said, "Your testimony was an answer to my prayer, something I've been looking for since you and Elder Flint." He said specifically when I said one of my favorite quotes by E. Holland: "All God has to work with is imperfection." Wow. During the testimony we had a couple people reference to missionary work. The member missionary work is exploding in our ward which we are so grateful for. Their prayers are changing from "Please help the missionaries find people to teach" to "Please help us find opportunities." Prayer is mind blowing. Holy crap. One said "I'm grateful for the missionaries and their impact on Deming." If this ward wasn't so awesome, Deming would be a freakin' downer, but there's a lot (for a small town) of awesome people and for that we're grateful.

Oh the joy of weekly planning

Is it Books of Mormon? or Book of Mormons? This is a mission wide turmoil hahaha never again will we be entertained by such dumb things hahah.

The drunk lady that lives next to us...passed away last Tuesday. Not sure how, but she mixes street drugs with her prescription...not good. We looked our the window one morning and saw the paramedics and some cops. We were questioned, surprise they didn't book us right then because we're mormon...we've come across so many people that hate Deming, it truly is a creepy place, but it's changing!

RIP

Our recent investigator family, Orlando and April's family, are flat out awesome. We went over there one day where they started talking about how one of their friends that just drove up was recently shot in a nearby park because of drug dealing and what not...I wasn't sure I was going to email home about this...alwell. They went on to say they're looking for him, and they all are people from Mexico. They went on to say that they will shoot anyone that they see to try and get to him. The man's leg was absolutely horrendous, but now we know who was shot like a month ago. We're teaching their family tonight so it should be an awesome lesson we're hoping. They love to have us over and to talk to us about all sorts of stuff, but they should be (hopefully) moving soon so we'll be somewhere a lil more comforting hahah. All is good, and we haven't felt in danger once. One day while we were leaving I told Orlando to "Don't get shot!" hahah we get a good laugh out of it.

we are all certified to volunteer at the animal shelter hahah

We went on 24 hour exchanges about a week ago with the Zone Leader's up in Silver City, and I went up to Silver while E. Dayley stayed in Deming. It was fun to serve somewhere else even for a short amount of time. Met some really down to earth-cool people up their, and then one guy we went and talked to is a sign music producer and used to be signed by a company that was owned by Universal Studios...we had an awesome talk and he looked up my (1) song that's on itunes and we had a good, nerdy talk about music. We talked about what classes to take and what not...dang that would be so awesome to major in that stuff and to be signed one day as a producer/writer. I wonder how Majoring to becoming a Doc. and then minoring in music would be...haha who knows.

We've been teaching Ryan a couple times since that one lesson with the Quintana's. They next time we went over multiple things again and then we asked if these visits and teaching him helped him at all, but then asked him to be completely honest...he said he truly enjoyed the company, but no. At least we know better what we're facing. Ryan is such a cool dude, he's 28 and has so much on his plate right now. I pulled out Mosiah 23: 21-22 and he said he got a lot from it, between trusting in God with his Faith and having patience, as all 3 of those we will are being tested very well with him. He couldn't come to church yesterday because of a probation class he had to go to, but he gave us some money to give to bishop for tithing, and he's still shooting for the 22nd for baptism, but only God can tell him his own path. We just do anything we can to help him get there and recognize it. We're teaching him tomorrow night, hope all is well with him.

We are doing a service project where we were asked to go kill all the rattlesnakes there....holy sketch hahah.

This is homeless man named Daniel who we've taught a couple lessons to. I bought him a burrito. Yea.

Ashley's date may or may not have to be moved back a week. It's originally set for THIS Saturday, but she couldn't come to church because her knee's in so much pain. Dang Satan haha. We're praying to see if what to do. We could have anywhere from 4-11 dates by next week...the work is hastening. No doubt!

At Ashley's she had a couple friends over...one of them was talking about how her place is haunted by one of her ex's that was killed years ago...it wasn't a good feeling and I had chill's because of the depth about the Demons and what not she told us about. 

The sister's decked out our apartment since I 'accidently' left the door unlocked...hehe...happy late bday Elder Dayley!

You have to learn to eat literally anything that's given to you. In the Spanish culture, it's an insult to reject food.. and yet I've lost wait. Wtf.

Almost 4 months out already! whaaa?

Love you all! Hope things are awesome. Sure miss a lot of people, but there's nothing else I'd rather be doing...except maybe wakeboarding...or blasting music.... 

God is great.

Satan sucks.

Congrats to all those that graduated! Wootwoot!!

D&C 31:6

-Elder Hales