the amistad of the members

Hola,

Graciella and her daughter Mariella were baptized on Saturday! I'm not sure if I have told you much of their story. They live with Victor, a less active member. The missionaries have been teaching them on and off for a few years now. We re-activated Victor who is now a faithfull member coming every week for the last month. We finally convinced both of them that they need to get married, so we held a marriage last Wednesday. That was an extremely long process, going into Centro to obtain all kinds of documents and setting up the marriage, but in the end it all worked out. Graciella has a slight handicap (but not enough to not need baptism) so it was really hard for the missionaries to teach her. We finally made progress when Victor became active and helped her understand. 1, he knows her well and knows how she understands things. 2, he can teach her in Guarani which is way easier for her to understand. So now we are helping them prepare to make covenants in the temple for next year. 

Well as far as numbers go its been one of the best weeks of my mission. Along with the baptisms and a marriage, we had 8 investigators at church, 30 lessons, 16 new investigators, and 18 baptism invites. Numbers aren't everything, but they are a great way to see how your area is growing. What I love about this week, is that we have many at church so we have people lined up to baptize the next 3 weeks. We are teaching a bunch of lessons w/ members so our investigators can feel the amistad of the members, we are finding many news which means we are not only focusing on the investigators we have at the moment, and we are inviting almost everyone to get baptized. This mission has the goal for every missionary to baptize every week. At first I thought it was nothing more than a dream, but en verdad it is very realistic.
Quick question, did Ian or Keaton ever become assistants to the president? I can't believe they came back already. Que rapido pasa el tiempo. 

I am still working on fixing my camera, I will hopefully send the fotos of Graciella/Mariella´s baptism as well as Fabio´s next Lunes.

Hey, remind me to write you about Sergio y Bernardino next week. Sometimes I forget all the things I want to tell you about. I have met so many incredible people down here, I love it. 

Much love, kisses, y amor,

Elder LaFaye