July 30, 2012: Espíritu Santo

Hola Familia,
  Another super crazy week, with a super crazy ending. Sounds like over there everything is good. I am super jealous that the Olympics is on. I love the Olympics and I will definitely have to watch the opening and closing ceremonies when I get home. It is so sweet to see the whole world compete in sports together. I bet it is pretty fun. Sounds like it has been pretty hot. It went this whole week without raining and so it was super hot. My hands broke out in a rash because of how hot it is.
 
The work though is fantastic. We worked really hard and we saw some great fruits. The Lemus family is doing great. they were excited the whole week and they ended up getting married on friday and on saturday we went over and the mom (Vitia) was super hesitant for her baptism on sunday. In the end we were able to talk to her and she really understood, especially with the help of her husband, and in the end the both of them were baptized on sunday. Marcos(the husband) is super awesome. He is already asking us when he can leave with us to work and help other people.
 
So we are also teaching this lady named María. She is about 50 and is super awesome. She had gone to church twice and liked it a lot, but did not want to get baptized at all. On Saturday we went over and supposedly she had done something super bad to her knee and couldn't walk so she wouldn't be able to go to church. Sunday in the morning we received a call during the sacrament meeting and it was her! She said she had walked from her house and it was in a ton of pain. So we went out and we found her and she came to church. We went to her house right after all of the meetings and she told us that Sunday morning she woke up early wanting to go to church. She went to open her door and her door that can only be locked from outside was locked and she was SO confused cause she had the only key. Her daughter had to jump over to open it. She explained to us that she thoroughly believed it was the devil trying to stop her from going to church. I then told her that I thought that the devil knew she was going to do something better than just go to church. She started to tear up and we invited her to be baptized and she said yes. We told her there was a baptismal service that same day of the Lemus family and she could also be a part of it. She accepted and we called up the district leader and he did the interview and in the end she was baptized. She was so happy too. It was an AMAZING miracle.
 
We have a lot of great people progressing and I am super stoked for this area in the upcoming weeks. The only problem is I won't be here to see it all. We received the call last night for transfers and I will be leaving. I was so mad. I have been here for 6 months and it has gone by so quick and I wanted to end my mission here so bad. So for my last transfer (my last 6 weeks) I will be going to some new area. It will be a cool experience and I am excited to get to know more, but super sad to leave this area. It has been awesome.

Well I have written a lot and I will talk to you all next week. Enjoy the Olympics!

Elder Gillette

July 23, 2012: John 10:16

"And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." - John 10:16

Hola Familia,

Crazy week up there in the states it sounds like. Everybody here has heard about the shooting that happened and they keep asking me why the states are so crazy. Then I just kind of stare at them and ask them the same question. They are very funny people the El Salvadoreans. But it still does sound super crazy what that guy did and my comp right now is from Colorado so he was interested to find out where it happened, but in the end he lives like 7 hours from Denver.

So that is really weird that Chase is already home. I can't even imagine how it will be when I see kelsy. I imagine it will be an interesting experience. That is really cool that Dani is going to have a baby. i didn't know that, but that is exciting.

Everything here has been going really well, except for the weather. It is super super hot during the day and then in the night it just pours. Both of my pairs of shoes now have wholes through them. It is pretty intense.
 
The week though went really well and I really enjoyed it. We are teaching some really great people. I told you all a little about the Familia Lemus. They are great. A young couple that we are teaching and this week we went with so many members. The family is really excited, but they played a mean joked and when we got there they started saying that they didn't feel like they could be baptized and how his work was really hard. Then they both started laughing and were like, "Just kidding, we are totally going to get baptized the 29th." They are awesome and they have a little 3 year old kid named Jorge that is the man. I love that kid.

So I also told you all briefly about the super rich family that we found last week and this week we were able to go back and teach them again. And they are AWESOME! The dad's name is Jose and it is a family of 5. They are all really chubby even down to the 4 year old daughter. The dad said our first visit that he has been wondering his whole life why Christ never came to the Americas and why he only loves Jerusalem. We explained The Book of Mormon and he loved it. We shared John 10:16 and he LOVED that scripture. We went back another day and he said the day after we talked he got all of his employees together for a meeting (He owns many shoe stores and a plant that makes all of the shoes, so he said he will repair my shoes for free, which he said is about 300 workers) and said that he read that scripture for the meeting and explained about The Book of Mormon. I was in awe.

The family went to church and they loved it we gave them like an hour tour of the chapel with the bishopric. It was awesome and he asked when he could get baptized. He and his family will be getting baptized the 29th also. I am so excited for this weekend. It will be fun.

Well other than that not much else. It has been fun this week here, except for the whole cough I have had this week. I know it is from the super weird weather. I can't imagine what my body will do when I come home to the super dry cold weather. I feel like I am just going to fall apart.

I love you all and have a great week.

Elder Gillette