Milagritos que nos sostienen

7 Sep 2009

Dear Family,

I´m glad to hear that nearly everything is going well. I´ll continue praying for Dad and his back. I´ll start off by answering the questions the Mom and Dad sent because I didn´t have enough time to do so last week. First of all, no, I never received the package from grandma for my birthday. I have no clue what happened to it. But, Grandma, thank you very much. I´m sure I would have loved it. And thank you for the one you sent for Christmas. And the HLJ rings made a good gift for the younger converts in Castillo. I gave them to the twins, Karen and Florencia, and also to Vania and Veronica. I don´t remember to who else. I know they wore them for the first few days, but I don´t know if they took them off when they realized they turn the finger green. (I don´t know if the ones you sent do so, but I know the CTR rings do and I think one of the children here in Moreno said the HLJ rings do too).

This past week, I was thinking about asking if you were going to send another package soon. The main thing that I want is a package of mechanical pencils. The ones that I buy here break (for internal reasons, not because I maltreat them) within a week. I´m still using one that I brought from the US that still works, but I don´t count on it lasting the rest of my mission. I prefer to use pencil when I plan instead of pen for obvious reasons. The other thing I wanted to ask for was more Post-It notes. Those have been excellent to mark chapters in the book of mormon that I want the person to read or to leave behind a note or to have something to write on. They also fit really well inside of my scripture bag. So it would be nice if you sent a few more pads of normal sized Post-it notes.

With regards to food. I don´t really care that much. I´m used to the food here now. But, what could be nice would be some more snickers and nuts. The nuts in a trail mix or whatever because those are a good, healthy, fast snack that puts something in the stomach. Other than that, I don´t need anything else.

And I think I´m still good on clothes. I did lose one of my grey pants. How I am not sure. It was probably left behind during a transfer or got mixed in the clothes of another missionary. But, I´m fine using only 3 pairs of pants. They are still all in good condition. All of my shirts are still good. Well, one of the long sleeve shirts has bad rust stains on it because I accidently left a few nails in the shirt pocket, but I always wear a sweater to cover it up anyways. My only problem is that I think I´m going to need to take out a bit more money from the bank to buy white pants when we go to the temple. In the baptism of Nora, E´Callejas and I both lent our baptismal pants to David to see which one would fit better. After the baptism, the pants of E´Callejas came back wet, but mine never showed up. And they haven´t shown up yet either. So, I think I´ll have to go buy new ones on the 22nd and use E´Cumrine´s on Saturday.

Ok, now to talk about my week. It was really quite a good week, full of its own little experiences and miracles. The first is that we worked hard and with all of our force and God blessed us for our efforts. The main miracle came to pass yesterday. After church, we had a meeting with our ward missionary leader (it is a bit difficult to work with him because many times he doesn´t do what we ask him to do, but I think he is improving) and he surprised us by telling us that he wants us baptize his step-daughter next sunday. I had no idea that he has a 9 year old step daughter that lives with him and who went to church the past two sundays. We told him, “Great, we´ll go talk with her right now!”
We began talking with Valentina, and found that she is completely ready to be baptized. Her family had taught her well. She wasn´t able to go to church and be baptized before because her real father often comes to take her home for the weekend, but she says that she has been praying that he doesn´t come because he insults her and she wants to go to church. It is really sad, but what is even sadder is that it isn´t uncommon. The zone leaders came for the baptismal interview of Lourdes (the niece of Ramona who is really excited for her baptism) and we had them interview Valentina too. So, within 3 hours of getting to know her, she had her interview and will be baptized with Lourdes on Saturday. It was really nice to have that little gift from our Heavenly Father.
This sunday we had a bunch of people in church who aren´t members. Several of them need to get married first, but it sounds like they are actually going to start working on the papers this week. There were also two children of a family that we found this week that are really humble and inocent. We were walking and doing our contacts and we found a woman and her daughter selling movies. We set an appointment with them and felt that they could be really good investigators. On saturday, we went to their house, even though they live really, really far away. They live in the middle of a large campo (field...I can´t remember the best word) in a small house given to them by a pastor of another church a few years ago. There are a lot of children in this family and we showed the the video “The Restoration.” They really liked it and the Mom told us that she had prayed to know which is the true church a few weeks ago and that she had a dream that she didn´t quite understand, but showed her that she shouldn´t go to an Evangelical church. We felt a really good spirit with them and we have a lot of hope. She couldn´t come yesterday, but two of her children did and really liked it. We´ll be going back on Wednesday to see how they are doing.

Thank you for all your help and prayers. I´m loving it here right now, especially with E´Callejas and the effort that he puts forth. He´s a true example for me, just like E´González was. They really help me to gain the potential that I have. Until next week.

With love,
Elder Drake Ranquist