e-mail, Monday, June 14th, 2010

Here it is! Enjoy! And just so you know, I LOVE my Brother! :)

Oh! He sent pictures. I'll add them later. Just be sure to check back to see them!

Subject: ¡You know i dont speak spanish!

oh but i dooooo... haha. its quite the enjoyable experience to have a conversation in spanish. haha. this week has baaen pretty awesome. we have worked pretty hard and had some success and right about now it is picking up and moving on towards the baptismal font. I will start with our activities from tuesday.

My companion and i were talking and walking on the way to an appointment and he asked me what the name of an area was... i replied with an exhuberant... yo no se. after our appointment conviently wasnt home or was avoiding us... who knows. we turned back to walk the 3 miles to our plan b. but wait. WHAT IS THE NAME OF THAT PLACE??? lets march on down into the valley and ask someone.so we do exactly that. just marching along and marching along.and we come to a river. and we follow this stream up through a neighborhood and then the houses stop... and the JUNGLE starts. :) so we are marching along and marching along and then we are lost in the jungle. but then we found the river and we were ok but we were still in the jungle. fun fact about San Andres is that the water in the city rivers is poop broen and it smells like...well... POOP. but here in the jungle it was crytal clear and so cool. but anyway me and my companion got a little carried away playing with our cameras and snapping fotos. haha. i love the jungle. still havent seen any monkeys which is buuuuummin me out but i am sure i will find some in Tabasco. but after about an hour of jungle trekking we got back to the houses and found out that the colonia is named San Martin. i have attatched a few fotos of this and ill send more in another email. but anyway it was so humid in the jungle that i was soaked head to toe with sweat after this. quite the excursion just to ask the name of the area.

after that we aorked really hard through the rest of the week. we have been focusing on our street contacts in hopes of finding a family to teach and it has been helping us find a lot of people to teach and eventually baptize. we contacted a lady who accepted an appointment the next day and in her appointment we taught her about the Restoration and about Joseph Smith and the whole first lesson and she told us how grateful she is to be talking to us and how she met with the missionaries once before but then she was living in a union libre(living together and not being married) but now she is single. i leaned in a little and whispered... NOWS YOUR CHANCE... haha we taught her about baptism and how it is for 2 things. Un Bautismo es para ser limpio de sus pecados y es la puerta para regresar y vivir con Dios para siempre.we taught her that a baptism is be clean of your sins and it is the door to return to live with God again. we also taught that it has to be done by someone who has the autority of God which we know as the Priesthood which was restored through Joseph Smith. That it is only through this power and recieving the gift of the holy ghost by the laying on of hands that a baptism can be valid before God. She accepted a baptismal date for 3 weeks and is getting ready for the water. its awesome to see people who are missing something in their lives and then we give them the Gospel, and it fills their lives to the top with love and joy.I am so happy to be a missionary and i love the work that i have the opportunity to do. I know that th Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only true Church and it is the same Church that Christ established in His life, with the same organization. with a Prophet, the Priesthood, and 12 apostles. Christ established one Church. there is only one Church and for those of you who don't know... this is His Church. There is know doubt in my mind and if there was i wouldn't be able to do the things that i am doing.

something else kinda cool. i helped prepare i cows head to be cooked... i was with a member family but their uncle who is not a member got mad at us for taking pictures and playing with the eyeballs and stuff but it was gnarly. Mexico is so fun.

today we had our Zone Activity for the transfer which i again failed to take pictures of. but we rode in the back of a ford ranger pick up for 2 hours to get to the Montepillo beach and played american footbal and football soccer. we couldnt swim but i definitely found ways to get wet. this beach was beautiful... jungle mountains all around and the water was perrrrfect. luckily it rained heavy last night and the weather was nice and cool and cloudy this morning so it was awesome to play on the beach. we fit 18 missionaries in a ford Ranger for 2 hours both ways. haha. oh and the cool part that made it worth it was that we were all alone on the beach. playing like goobers. it was awesome..

but now i am out of time and i gotta get back to work. i love you all so much. keep me posted and send me fotos of everything that is going on. you all have my email and my address so stop being so dang lazy... :)

love,

Elder Elrey