Elina, Melina, Flia Rodriguez, President Salas, and another talk. . .

So yeah, as you all can see from the title of the letter, im goign to be talking about a couple of different things.

This week Eliana and Melina were baptized and confirmed!! Legit!!! And Eliana is already goign to have a calling in the ward because she has an interview with the bishop on tuesday. :D

I had the opportunity to baptize Eliana and it was awesome!! She is probably one of my favorite people right now. She ended up reading to 2 nephi and she came to us telling us that she wanted to be baptized. it was such a cool conversion story. And Melina was baptized by Elder Hill.

The other area that is by us, La Quebrada, also baptized a cool kide named Miguel. He came to church and then said he wanted to be baptized right after... so yeah, he was definitely chosen.

We also found this legit family called the Rodriguez family.... There are... i think 9 people in the family and 3 of them came to church yesterday! :D On tuesday morning we were walking to pass by an inactive family. We were walking and I swear I heard someone say, "Hey look! the Mormons passed by! Dont talk to them" and Me, being my usual proud self said to myself, "Im going to go talk to them just to rub it in their face." So i ended up turning around and goign to knock on the door.... The door opened and it was Raquel. We presented our selves and I said, "Hi, we are missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known commonly as the mormons... do you know us?" she said that she had never heard of us... but she told us to come by after lunch and that her and all of her sisters would be willing to listen to us. So we passed by.

The first lesson was awesome!! we talked about why we are here on the earth and what we need to do to go back to the presence of God. We invited them to be baptized and they accepted :D. The next day we went back and talked more about baptism. thursday, we got to know the dad and he is super legit! He invited us back again.

so in all of the family there is: Jose 45, Raquel 23, Soledad 21, Melisa 17, Mariana 15, Rebeca 13, Valentine 7, and the twins 5..... We invited them all to church and Raquel, Melisa, and Mariana ended up coming.

They had a great time!! Mariana was asking my comp afterwards more about baptism and how we actually do it. They also got to know a lot of members and we planned 2 FHEs with them this week. So hopeuflly all goes well :D

We had our interviews with President Salas.... He has already been set apart as a 70 and he will be acting as a 70 in june.... im sure going to miss him. But he told us that we have a Mission Conference with all of hte mission this friday!!! :D Way legit! Elder Cook is going to be coming as well to give us some capacitation.

The bishop, sunday in the morning, called us and asked if i could give  a talk in sacrament meeting.... the third time in 2 months that ive had to do it... but I love doing it!! :D Hopefully when I get home ill still love it... im sure its a lot different in english than it is in spanish. but yeah, I talked about Pure love, Friendshipping, and Peter.... haha great combo.

Today we are going to go shopping so that my comp can buy some stuff for his family.

Ivana went to church as well but she is going out of town this weekend so she wont be able to be baptized. But we will have to see if we can baptize her before she leaves on vacation.

That is basically all that has happened this week! I love you all and I hope you are all doing well!

Be safe, read, pray, and go to church!

Elder Gray

1 Corithians 12:12-22

Hey everyone, how are you all doing??

This week for me has been awesome!! Eliana and Melina are getting baptized!!! por FINN!!

So yeah, they ended up coming to church and Eliana brought her boyfriend so that we can start teaching him. He is super cool! his sister is a member and she is inactive because a LOT of stuff has happened in her life and so she dropped the church to get her life in order. But she has the strong desire to come back. So now we have 3 ways of helping Cristian get baptized. 1. His sister 2. his girlfriend 3. NANCY!!

Nancy is legit. she keeps on dominatingthe people with her testimony and everyone she has given us as a reference has been baptized... now we just have to work on getting everyone in that barrio baptized and then that barrio will become a new branch!! LEGIT!

The only bad news that we had this week is that Ivana cant get baptized because she did end up coming to church... she fought with her mom and so she didnt feel like goign... we ended up heading to her house rigth before sacrament meeting to help give her some animo so that she would go to church.... at the end she finally said that she would get baptized next week..... so we will see.

But we ended up finding a couple of cool people this week as well. A LOT OF DADS.... yeah yeah... so yeah, it was really cool to start finding the dads of the families that we have been teaching. hopefully we can follow the example of Nephi and cut the head of the family off (baptize the dad) and then the rest of the family will follow them.

but well have to see.... todo esta en juego.

Wow... seriously it is hard to write in english... its starting to freak me out. but hey, when i get back ill be writing and talking a ton so its all good.

This week the other missionaries in my district baptized so we should be a district of SION! i hope our excitement for the work can spread to the other missionaries and allllll of us can start baptizing.

So yeah, that is all that happened this week.

just a lot of finding, teaching, and baptizing.

love you all!!

Elder Gray

Happy Mom's Day!

Wow.... It was great talking witht he fam... after 20 months of being here... i sure do understand the importance of familyand spending time with them. That is probably the biggest thing that i miss.... being able to just sit downa nd talk to my family for an hour. I MISS YOU GUYS!!

its weird to think that i only have 4 months left in the mission... maybe less if i can come home a couple weeks early to start school. thats like 15 weeks!! wowowowo.

well on sunday we had a lot of good news!! and a bit of bad news....

The good news is that we had 6 people at church!! the bad news is that the 2 most important peopel that we had, did not go to church.... :P

Eliana ana Melina didnt end up going to church and they didnt have a good excuse for why they didnt go.... i was really upset... So now we have to make them get baptized at a different time and they have to wait a whole other week so that they can receive the remission of their sins taht they are looking for. I just wish that peopel would understand the importance of everything that we teach... we really hold the same power and authority that john the baptist had... that is the same authority that helps give peopel the remission of their sins... the same authority that permits people to enter into the kingdom of god (john 3:5) with their first steps (2 nephi 31).

But the good news is that ivana did end up goingto church so she will be getting baptized on the 25th. she is soooo cool!!  :D I love her. haha and we also had another lady come to church...

she is named carina. she was going to church for a long time back in the day and her son got baptized, but she ended up not getting baptized for some reason... im not sure. but she wanted to come back to church and start going again. so we are going to go visit her during the week to see if we can help her with her goals and such.

the same three kids that came last week came again this week. we just need to talk to their parents to see if they can get baptized. and hopefully as we talk about it, they can learn the importance of it all as well.

then the other miracle that we had was this guy named walter. we found him on friday in the streeet. he just barely moved here form salta and he wants to start his life over again. So he found us in the street, asked us where the church was and then he showed up at 6 oclock. But he left early because he thought church was over so he didnt stay for the sacrament meeting.

so overall... it was a bitter sweet week. hopefully we can have more urgency with our investigators and they can really understand the importance of everything that we teach.

I love alll the mothers out there ! you are the best!! Keep going strong!

Elder Gray

Triple!!

This week was another amazing week here in La Rioja Capital. We ended up having a LOT OF SUCCESS. As a zone, we baptized the most in all of the mission and my district baptized more than some of the other zones.... it actually kinda made me feel bad... it wasnt a good month for the mission with baptisms... its ok though! we are goign to baptized a ton this month!!

We had transfers! Elder hill and I have stayed the same. Basically all of the zone stayed the same except for some of the elders that had to go home. And one elder is training a newby.

This week we had 6 peoplein church. ELIANA AND MELINA CAME!! yeah yeah. por fin.

They were all dressed up and nice and we went to pick them up with a member. Eliana went to relief society and Melina went to primary... she started crying for a bit because there weren{t that many other girls there in primary but then halfway through a bunch of other people showed up as well. 4 kids taht we ended up inviting to churh during the week showed up and had a great time.

During the sacrament meeting, Melina was watching all of the people go up to share their testimonies and she leaned over and asked me if she could bear hers as well. So we went up together and I whispered in her ear what she had to say. She talked about baptism, her mom, and Jesus. it was so cute. She is so ready to get baptized on the 18th!! Her mom Eliana also is getting super prepared!

Aimogasta (other area in my district) also had a lot of people in church. They ended up having 3 new people in church. They almost had a baptism as well and they should be baptizing her this week ASAP.

Elder hill and i also had a cool little milagro that happened. We were walking in the street one day and just chatting amongst ourselves when all of a sudden some random lady comes running up yelling at us, " Elders Elders Elders! I have something I need to tell you!". It was a lady taht we had talked to a week ago. We talked about baptism, the church, and my comp gave her a PLan of Salvation folleto. She told us taht she took it... went home... and put it away...  then one day, she woke up, was feeling way bad because apparently her son that was a month old died from a collapse of his lungs. she was feeling way bad about that when she remembered that she had talked to us.... she went, and took out the folleto... and the first thing she opened up to was the Spirit World. she started reading and started crying as she read abou the peace that there is when a person dies. Then she asked us for another folleto and she promised us she is goign to go to church and any time we want to go by, she will be there for us.

So were goign to pass by this next week.... :D

well. we ended up killing in the Logros this week!! we were working a full!!

ended up with 19 lessons with member, 25 news, 16 other lessons, 12 references, and weboth talked to a ton of people.

I really hope that you can all see the little miracles taht happen each day! I lov eyou all and hope you have a great week!

Elder Gray