February 20, 2013

Hello, family!

First of all an important piece of news before I forget. Starting the 4 of March P-day will be Monday. So starting that day I will write you on Mondays. Para que sepaís.

Thank you for the congratulations. The baptism was an awesome experience. It´s amazing seeing people making changes in their lives. I´m planning on sending my current camera card along with the jersey for Erin (sorry if it´s a little big) soon.

Things here are going well. This week was special because at the end of the week we realized that we had reached our goals in almost every key indicator (key indicators are things like: how many lessons with a member present, how many new investigators, how many references received, etc). We´ve been talking a lot the last little while in the mission about goals and about 2 or 3 weeks ago they gave us a standard of excellence, or minimum goals that we should have. These were higher than we had been getting, but then this past week we nearly reached all of them which is super cool!

But the most important thing is the people. We are continuing to work with Daniela who is amazing as ever! We have taught her Plan of Salvation and The Gospel since then lessons 2 and 3) and set a baptismal date for the 9th of March. She accepts everything we teach readily and says that it all makes sense and feels right. She always reads what we leave her and she has been to church twice now. We talked about repentance yesterday and invited her to repent of anything in the past she felt she needed to and she said: I don´t have anything to repent of, I´m a good person. She said it jokingly, but I think it´s true. She is a picture-perfect golden investigator. My only worry is that she is going to London over the weekend and going to a concert Sunday, but we explained how she could find a chapel close to her online, so I hope she still goes. It´s not the end of the world if she doesn´t, there is time enough before her baptism (an investigator has to attend 3 times before baptism), but it would be awesome if she went.

I also have great news about Eduardo and Paula. We had a lesson on Monday with just Eduardo (Paula was super sick) and we asked him straight up what was keeping him from reading the Book of Mormon. He explained to us that sometimes Paula discourages him from reading because it´s not the Bible. Her sister I guess has been telling her the same thing and she is really close to her sister. That may be part of why it´s so hard to meet with Paula as well. But the good news is the lesson we had yesterday. We had committed Eduardo to read again and he said: Maybe I´ll have a surprise for you next time. We passed by last night to visit Paula and give her a blessing. We taught about the priesthood a little and the authority and then gave her a blessing, which was a really cool experience. Then in talking afterwords we found out that Eduardo had read the chapter we left to her! How incredible is that?! It is absolutely incredible to see people progress.

We don´t have anyone new that we are working with right now. We have other investigators obviously, but we have a hard time meeting with them and they don´t progress. But of course we continue to look and the Lord blesses us for it.

The weather is starting to get warmer here. In fact today we went to the Parque Europa and it was a beautiful day. The Parque Europa is a park outside of Madrid that has scale replicas of famous sites all over Europe, such as the Eiffel Tower, The London Bridge, etc. Some of the replicas were pretty cool and it was nice to just be outside in the nice weather. I think spring is already on it´s way here which is a little weird for me. I feel like it should still be snowing, but I´m not complaining.

Your President´s day sounds amazing even if it wasn´t ¨exciting.¨ To just watch a movie and hang out with the family sounds great. :)

Wow, congratulations to all the girls! That´s awesome that Erin is going to run track. I always wish I´d done track. And Sarah is going to be in another play? Super cool. Congrats, Bekah, on being accepted to all those schools! That is amazing! How are you going to decide? Haha! I´m happy for you. Let me know where you go! What talented, intelligent sisters I have. I´m proud of you guys.

Well, I think that´s about it. Sorry if I forgot anything important. It´ll have to wait till next week. I´m always happy to hear that everyone is doing well. I love you all! You are always in my thoughts and prayers (but don´t worry, it never makes me trunky ;) ). Thanks for everything you do and have done for me. Say hi to everyone for me and tell Brother Killpack that I´m thinking about him and praying for his family. I hope all is well with them also. Until next week.

I love you!

Elder Cousins