New Years!

6 Jan 2009

Dear Family,

I´m glad to hear that everything went well for the holidays. Things have been going pretty well here as well. First I´ll write about our investigators, and if I have time, about New Years.

Right now, we are planning a baptism for this Saturday! Hernan Murguía is his name. A 12 year old boy who we believe is ready to make the commitments, with the help of his mother, cousins, aunt, and uncle. We are still hoping that the mother will talk with her husband about marriage. From what I understand, they were talking about marriage about this time last year and decided to do it, but just didn´t put it very high on the priority list. When we last entered the house, there was a vase of flowers for “lo mejor mujer en la tierra.” We have yet to meet him, but we are told he will come to the baptism Saturday. We changed the time to a little later to accomedate him.

We have another baptismal date set as well for the 31st of January. It isn´t certain yet, but we´ll see. His name is Carlos and is about 25 or so. His story is a bit interesting. About 2 weeks ago, we were walking and he stopped us to talk. He was a bit drunk and showed us a leaf of Marijuana. But we decided to follow him to his house and teach him the first lesson. We left him with the folleto (pamphlet) not expecting anything of him. Yesterday, when we went by, he was different. For one, he wasn´t drunk. He read the folleto and said that he prayed and feels that Joseph Smith was a prophet. He wants to make the changes in order to follow the gospel. We have another appointment set and have plans to accompany him to church Sunday. We hope that things will progress well with him.

Sunday we had a surprise. One of our investigators, María Manchaca, who we had been working with for about a month and who promised us would come to church every Sunday, but always found an excuse to not go afterwards, showed up! We had put her on the backburner because she hadn´t been fulfilling her commitments. She has a son on a mission and another son preparing to leave (both live elsewhere). She also has another daughter and a three grandaughters living with her. The daughter is an inactive member, but came Sunday too. They asked my companion to do a baby blessing during sacrament meeting for the two younger granddaughters. It was really great to see them come to church.

Ok, New Year´s here is almost the same as Christmas Eve. Both are times for the people to get together and party and shoot off fireworks. But, the fireworks was a much bigger display for New Years. I now understand what it sounds like to be in the barracks during a war. We have walls and trees around us, so we could really see much, but it was loud for about half an hour. The missionaries that live in some of the bigger cities had it worse. But it was fun.

I wish you all well and I pray for you.

Love,

Elder Drake Ranquist