Picturas!

Dear Family,

We had a great baptism this Saturday! Here are a few photos.

The first isn´t of the baptism, it is of a family from my last area. This is familia Vera. The father is a Police Officer and Works a lot. He also gave me a really cool tie clip that I think is from his dress uniform. The mother is a return missionary who complained to us that we never pass by. When we did, we found out that their son wasn´t baptized. So we baptized him. And we worked with this family a lot over the few months I was there with E´Spendlove. I was usually pretty quiet, but they said that I was very spiritual.

This is the family of Ciris, Luís, and Juan. The mother and the other son (Ciris also, who didn´t come to the baptism and we don´t quite understand why) are already members. The baptism went extremely well.

I believe this one is of the three who were baptized, along with my companion E´Gonzalez and E´Gilmore. He received permission from the president to come to this baptism because he worked so much with them. I didn´t really have much to do with it.

This is a poster that my companion made for an investigador named Roxanna. She stopped smoking recently and he made it to remind her that she is committed to not smoking again. This poster is really, really nice and is hanging next to the TV in the main room of the house. All her visiters comment about it and I think one of her friends is now trying to stop smoking because of her great example. Roxanna will be baptized this Saturday, along with Maxi and Lola.
I have a few more pictures I want to sent, I´ll get to work on them now.

-E´Ranquist

Ok, I´m back.

You know the pizza I was telling you about that we ate every Sunday? Well, here they are. They´re pretty good, but I do miss Papa John´s Supreme pizza. A lot of times these pizzas included either green olives (to which I´ve accustomed myself and can eat without problems. I´m not sure if I can touch black olives yet) or anchovies (which really aren´t bad. They aren´t my preffered, but it was nice to have a little variety in the pizza).

Here is the maker of all of the pizza, Hma. Valle. She is also the mother or grandmother of about half the ward. I wish I could´ve gotten a photo of all of them together, but suprisingly, there weren´t very many there that last day, so I didn´t get one. Some of her daugters include Hma. Vera (we baptized her son), Hma. deBernardi (the Relief Society President who loved to have hilarious word fights with my companions), and Hma. Aza (who would absolutely stuff us every time we had lunch with her. A returned missionary as well).

This is a photo of a family we helped reactivate. One of the sons, Matías, wasn´t there (the one that is a little bit more rebelious), but here is the father, Hmo. Urquirza, Lucas the son, and I can´t remember the daughter´s name. The father was usually a little frustrated with his sons, but they were a great family. It is a bit sad that their mom left them. I really hope that Lucas and Matías will be ready and able to serve missions in a few years.

And last of all, this is a Picture of part of the Pereira family. They are the ones that we made the floor for and are working hard to get ready to be sealed in the temple. I believe I´ve sent pictures home of the rest of the family in the baptism of Hernán.

Ok, there´s all the pictures. I don´t have much time to write now, but I´ll put a bit. We are doing really, really well in this area. It is amazing how prepared a lot of these people are. Right now, we have a baptism planned for every Saturday of this transfer (6 weeks). This week is Roxanna, Maxi, and Lola. The following week, the twin girls of Roxanna. The week after Osorio, the neighbor of Maxi, who needs to quite drinking wine (he´s following a plan I made to help him!), and the week after is a couple that came to the baptism Saturday without us knowing it that the family with whom we ate lunch on Sunday notified us. I´ll talk more about them next week I believe.

I´m really loving it here. Part of me didn´t want to take P-day and just go out and work. I´m glad all is going well with you.

Sincerely,
Elder Drake Ranquist