Hey World!

Well, it was a busy week here in Lopez Camelo. Lots of travel, but we´re still getting some work done! We found a family of 5, 3 of which are older than 8. The Silva Family. The daughter is 8 years old, and we found this family through them. Malena is friends with Jonathan Gimenez (9yrs old, and baptized about 3 weeks ago). She went to his baptism with an aunt, and after seeing him baptized, decided that she too wanted to be baptized. We talked with the aunt, and got the information to go to her house. The Parents are great! - Oswaldo and Synthia. They both work alot, but are also very receptive, especially Synthia!

Macarena Radolovic is the friend of Jimena Acuña, who was baptized the week after Jonathan Gimenez. Macarena is also progressing very well, and had her second church attendance yesterday. She had to leave early, but enjoyed the meeting none the less! We had a lesson with her and the family of Jimena a few days ago, and Jimena shared her testimony with Macarena! It was AMAZING being able to see a recent convert sharing her testimony with an investigator!

We´re working with another family, Richard and Noelia. They are living in a house with a LOT of other family, some of which are members, but haven´t been to church in YEARS, and are not very good examples to them. They want to change their lives, and get out of the pit that they are in. We are very excited for them! They were going to come to church today - i even called sunday morning at 8, and everything was fine - but they didn´t show up. I hope nothing has happened.

Ada Paye is the next programmed baptism that we have. If it´s out Heavenly Fathers will, she will be baptized here in Lopez Camelo this Saturday. Last week, one of her sisters died, and left behind a 7yr old Daughter. The dad has to work, and asked Ada to go an live with them to take care of the daughter while he is at work. She started packing her stuff, and was going to leave in the moment, and then her daughter started talking to her about what a rash decision she was going to make - especially since she only met her brother-in-law 2 or 3 times. He wanted her to move at the end of this week - on saturday morning to be exact - but we told her that her daughter was right, and that she needed to pray before making such a big decision, and leaving behind everything that she has.
I don´t want to see her leave, but if it´s God´s will, she´ll be leaving soon to take care of her Niece. I think we´ll know tonight what´s going to happen.

Guillermo Gomez was baptized on Saturday, and confirmed memeber of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Sunday! The baptismal service was small, but great! One of Guillermo´s aunts passed away the week before his baptism, and for respect, they didn´t have any sort of reception after the wedding, so, we bought a cake, and had a mini-party after the baptism! We´re still not giving up on Jimena. We want to know what happened to make her stop listening to us. The posative is that she came to the baptism, and to the confirmation on sunday! They´re on their Honey Moon now for the Next 7 days - they´re going Skiing in Mendoza!

I Love you all, and wish you the best in everything that you do!

Love,

Elder Denton

7/19/10 - Letter to the World

Hello world!

It is freezing cold here, and my fingers don´t want to cooperate with the keyboard...

This last week was another week of success!

From the baptisms last week, we found a new investigator. Her name is Macarena, and she is one of Jimena´s best friends. Macarena is 16 years old, and is truly one of God´s chosen children. She told us that she has been looking for the true church. She has gone to many, but hasn´t felt anything. (She was with the Jehova´s Witnesses for 4 years) She has also seen a lot of things in different areas that she doesn´t like.

We´ve had 2 lessons with her, and after each one she has expressed that she feels a lot more comfortable with us, than in any other place she´s gone. She is amazed by the fact that everything that we are teaching her is more or less what she´s thought, but she´s never been able to find the place that teaches it.

With the weather changing here, everybody is getting sick. It´s a lot harder to work in the cold, and the rain, but we´re pushing along here!

Yesterday we had a lesson with Guillermo Gomez. We confirmed everything, and everything is on track for his wedding on Thursday, and his baptism on Friday. We´re pretty worried about Jimena, his future wife, because she hasn´t been listening to us lately....actually, for about a month. It´s like she´s avoiding us, and with the little time that we were able to see her before, it has a big effect. Guillermo told us that she has a lot of stress with her work, and studies. I hope that we can talk with her, but sadley, i don´t think that she will be able to be baptized with Guillermo on Friday.

Last night we had a special lesson with Jimena Acuña, and her family. We watched The Testaments. It´s been a long time since i´ve seen it, and the first time in spanish, and it´s still just as good as i remember it!!! The spirit was really strong during the movie! We also left them with another movie to watch later in the week!

We weren´t able to see Rocio much this last week, she´s been really busy with work, with her Son, and then SHE got sick. She decided that it didn´t matter, and we had her baptismal interview on Saturday morning, and then she was baptized in the afternoon. She had asked me to baptize her, but last sunday her little brother, who was baptized about a month ago, got the priesthood, and is a priest...so we had him baptize her! It was GREAT!! She had lots of family come from all over, and a few friends as well!

This next week is going to be a busy for Elder Labra and I...We have conferences Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Guillermo´s wedding on Thursday, a District Meeting on Friday, and Guillermo´s baptism Friday aswell.

I love you all, and hope that you´re enjoying the sun and fun!

Love,  Elder Denton

New Mission President!

President and Sister Gulbrandsen arrived July 8th, 2010

Hey Family, Friends, and Everybody else!

I Hope that everybody is doing well, and that you are all having a great week! I had an AMAZING week!
As i wrote last week, we had been preparing the baptisms for Rocio Fernandez and Jimena Acuña...welllllll.....Rocio´s 2 year old little boy decided that he was going to get Chicken pox this last week.

The baptism was all planned for friday - interviews in the morning, and baptisms at 5pm, right after the ward activity finished. Rocio called us on thursday night and told us that she was going to have to wait another week because of her son. I was crushed. I was so excited for the baptisms, and the progress of these people, and didn´t want to see them have to wait even longer to get baptized. We wanted to meet our weekly goal that we had put to have 2 baptisms, and if you remember Nicolas Leiva, he almost got baptized a few weeks ago, but then he got sick. We had a lesson with him, and he told us that he had been having doubts because of what some people had told him, and he wasn´t sure anymore....

We knew that Nicolas was going to be in the church playing soccer in the morning at the same time that Jimena was having her interview, but we couldn´t get ahold of him to confirm anything. When we got to the church, we had the interview with Jimena, and then went outside to talk with Nicolas. We asked him if he´d like to be baptized that same day, and expressed again that he had some doubts still. Elder Labra and I were with Elder Rodriguez and Elder Pearson, because Elder Pearson had done the interviews, and we all noticed that Nicolas was there in the church with all of the lessons, the person who he had chosen before to baptize him (Gustavo Romano) was also there playing soccer, the person to do the interview was there, we had white clothes, and the baptismal font was being filled for Jimena.

We decided to go inside, and had him pray to ask Heavenly Father if he needed to be baptized that day. He did it, and still felt a little uneasy. We said - Ok - how about you have your interview with Elder Pearson, and after the interview, you can choose.

He agreed, and about 40min later they finished. When we asked how he felt, he said ´I feel great - and i want to be baptized today!´ I don´t know how to express the joy i felt! Elder Labra and Elder Pearson ran to our appartment to call his parents, and tell them that their son was going to be baptized at 5. They said -ok...we´ll be there!´ Which was a HUGE step for them, because they didn´t want to go to the church before.

There were 60 in the baptism, and the spirit was WAY strong! Jimena and Nicolas´s parents were really emotional, and afterwards, Nicolas was also.

Nicolas has an interview today with somebody in the bishopric to get the priesthood on sunday!

Rocio will be baptized this Saturday, and we´re going to see if Ada wants to be baptized this week too...she knows that the church is true, but wants to be even more sure...

I´ve written a lot already. Sorry.

We met our new mission president yesterday. We´re going to continue having a lot of success here! The next week is the wedding of the Gomez family, and their baptisms!

I love you all! Thanks for everything that you do!
Love, Elder Denton

7/5/10 - Letter to the World

Hello World,

First of all - HAPPY 4TH OF JULY (yesterday) - a bit embarassing BUT...i didn´t even realize that it was the fourth of july until we were planning last night. I looked at my Agenda, and my companion wanted to talk in English (he´s chilean)...and i said that it was the 4th of July .... and then i realized. haha.  ANYWAYS....
We had a great baptismal service. Jonathan was the only one that got baptized, but it still went really well. The spirit was really strong, adn there were a lot of members there to support him!

Rocio Fernandez - She WANTED to change her baptismal date AGAIN. She said that she still didn´t feel completely sure. We had a lesson with her of what we had planned to teach her, the stuff that we still have to teach her before she is baptized, and then we talked about Jesus Christ, and the atonement. We read in Alma 7:11-15. Afterwards, we knelt down, and told her that she needed to pray, asking God specifically is she needed to be baptized this weeked. She prayed, and afterwards, when we asked her how she felt she said ¨I feel like i have a lot more desire to be baptized next weekend.¨ (that was saturday!) Soooo...we´re planning her baptizm!

Jimenna Acuña (Esttamatti) - Basically the same thing happened with Jimenna. She actually told us that some of her friends from her church had been over to her house, and she had told them that she was preparing to be baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They obviously tried to talk her out of it, but she told them that she had already made up her mind. We challenged her to be baptized last friday, and she said yes, but with hesitation. We told her to pray about it, and then invitied her to Jonny´s baptizm on saturday. She came, and after the baptizm, when we asked her how her prayer went she told us that she recieved her answer, and that the baptisms made it even stronger. We´re planning her baptism for friday also!

We saw Ada on saturday just before the baptism, but she was heading home, and really tired. She said that sunday she was going to go to Church in Sabio, with her Daughter. We have challenged her to be baptized, but i´m not sure if it´s going to be this weekend. She has the date for this weekend, but she also has had problems with people from other religions. It is weird that random people can find our investigators, and start to tell them lies about the church. She told us that in the street, somebody from another church saw her, and knew somehow that she was investigating the LDS church. They told her that we only look to baptize people with a lot of money to take their money in tithing. ....we obviously expleined the doctrine of tithing to her, and she´s all good...but we have a lot left to teach her, and if she´s baptized THIS weekend, only a few days.

Silvia and Reuben Franco have fallen off of the face of the earth. We had a lesson with them last week, and since then, we haven´t seen them. They don´t have a phone, so we can´t call them, and every time that we pass by to visit them, they aren´t home. They had their baptismal date for the 17th, but since they didn´t come to church, they´ve lost it. I hope we can find them soon, and that everything is ok.

We´re still having problems with Jimena Gomez. We haven´t seen her in about 2 weeks. Everything is ok for their wedding, but she has a LOT going on with work, and school...and she is basically avoiding us. We´re still going to do everything we can to have another lesson with her to see what we can do to help, and strengthen her faith.

The Sanchez´s continue 100%! Full steam ahead! Heriberto at the beginning had SO MANY doubts, and questions, specifically about spirits...but once he recieved an answer from God that this is the true church, all of the questions about those doubts have stopped.

Evangelita Llanos was confirmed yesterday with Jonathan. Being fast and testimony meeting, Evangelita had a desire to get up and share her testimony. It was INCREDIBLE to hear her testimony. With only knowing that the Church even existed for about a month, the testimony that she has is super strong. She talked about how she´s been looking all her life for the truth, and a few times thought she had found it. She had been baptized 4 times in 4 different churches before she met us. WOW. What an example to all those that say No, i´m too old to change.

I Love this work, and am excited to continue and help others recognize what they need to do to return to our Heavenly Father after this life. I Know that Jesus Christ is our savior, and that His is the only name given by which salvation can be attained. I Know that God Lives, and that he loves us. It was because of his love that he send Christ to suffer for us. Joseph Smith was called of God, and thanks to him, we have the fully restored gospel once again established here in the earth!

I Love you all!  Love, Elder Denton
 
Challenge - Give your local missionaries AT LEAST one reference this week. I know that everybody reading this knows at least 1 person that isn´t a member that the missionaries could teach.