Speaking of hard work paying off, it is. We had a baptism this week, a girl named Larisa. She is 15 and lives next door to the Martinez family. (Nancy) She is great and I'm sure she will be fine for the rest of her life. Now we are going to start working with her niece and nephew and her sister who she lives with. We are also getting close to seeing another baptism, Geronimo´s cousin. Her name is Camila. I'm not exactly sure how old she is but she's in Young Women's. It should be good. We have planned the 18th, but she still needs permission from her mom, but we are hoping. We also still have the Ponce family. Their papers are almost ready which means wedding and baptism, which will be great. We will see what happens. We are hoping for 5 more baptisms before I leave here, so we will see. A lot of our investigators aren't progressing as well as we would like, but we do have a few, and some others just have hidden doubts that we need to solve and they'll be ready.

I believe very strongly that we should always focus on the blessings. The first 2 points of lesson 1 are God is our loving Heavenly Father and the gospel blesses families. Most people just jump over those 2 points, deeming them unworthy of time to explain, but I believe that of the first lesson, the restoration, they are almost the most important, because why would someone change their religion or change who they are if they aren't going to get something out of it. The rest of the restoration is unimportant if they don't understand that it will bless them. It's like Elder Holland said, "teach your investigators that baptism is for the remision of sins. In the fourth article of faith Joseph Smith could have said "baptism to be member of the church," but he didn't he said "baptism for the remision of sins." We always need to focus on the blessings that come. If we don't, it is just needless information.

It's like a math class. I always hated math class because the math teacher never showed me when I could use the principle in real life. But there was one unit I liked and that was the one talking about interest because they explained to me "look you can use this when you are trying to put money in the bank and want to find out where to put it." It's the same principle. I hated math class up until they showed me how a principle would help me in my life, for that reason I hated math but absolutely loved physics (doesn't quite make sense does it), but it was just because I saw a use in my daily life for physics. The gospel is the same way. We as "math teachers"(gospel teachers) need to show our "math students"(gospel students,investigator, less active member, or even active member) how "math"(the gospel) will help them every day of their lives. I know that the gospel is applicable to every person every day of their lives and so our task is find that point and apply it. That's why listening, discerning, and applying are inseperable parts of teaching in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Well that's probably more than I meant to say about that. but it's an important principle.

Well really I don't have much more to say but I do love you tons and I look forward to hearing from you next week. I miss ya and look forward to talking with you again. I love ya and am grateful for all you do for me.

Te quiero mucho familia!

Elder Brown