Dear Family and Friends,
Well holy cow my last email to y’all was so stinkin’ long. So I’ll try to keep this one shorter. This week was a pretty good week. On Wednesday, we had a combined zone conference with the Broadway Zone. There was a seventy, Elder Christofell Golden, Jr. who toured our mission. He gave a talk last conference called, “The Father and the Son,” I think. It was really good. He didn’t prepare a script or anything. He just went by the spirit. He sure loves that doctrine about the Father and the Son. It’s really important. He rebuked us a bit… but at the end he told us that he feels that we are one of the most obedient missions he has ever visited and also told us that we are leading our area, the North American South-West Area in a bunch of categories, pretty exciting!
Lessons With Members
This week, Elder Fryer and I got 11 lessons with a member present. Not bad, for anyone who is familiar with missionary work. Pretty exciting. I hope y’all got to watch the broadcast last night too. Sounds like we will be getting more members out with us. There are going to be some new drastic changes in missionary work but I don’t know if I will be around for them. Although, they did say that our mission had been chosen to be one of the first ones to launch it. We will see!
Alejandro And Julianna
As far as a baptismal update: Alejandro Bastida is still getting baptized. So is Julianna Saldivar. She is the boyfriend of one of our YM who is getting ready for a mission, Eliud. She is awesome. I’ve been worried, wondering if she is really doing it for the church or for Eliud? But she gave up iced tea on the spot when we taught the word of wisdom, even though she loves it. We got to teach her at her house today. She lives in the really nice part of Pasadena. She finally told her Catholic mom yesterday that she is getting baptized. Her mom doesn’t understand our beliefs and has heard a lot of negative false things, but she said that she would support her decision. The good news is that we are going to teach her mom this week to explain some things to her and help her understand. Eliud was thinking that maybe we should postpone the baptism and then Julianna got mad at him and said, “this is my day, I’ve prayed about it, and I’m going to get baptized!” so.. it sounds like she has a testimony! haha It’s crazy to think this transfer has gone by so fast. As always, with transfers coming up, there is all of that transfer prediction talk, and for some reason, people always like to take guesses at what will happen with me.
As for me, I think I’m going to stay and “die” here in Pasadena South until the end of my mission! It’s not unlikely! we shall see!
Love Y’all!
Elder Viitanen
