Dear Family and Friends,

I’d like to start out with a joke, but due to the many people that have made fun of me for my lowly attempts (you know who you are), I have humbly declined this week. Haha

Anyways! Once again it was a wonderful week for Elder Torres and I. We had lots of work to do around this place. First things first, we had 3 baptisms this weekend. Seydi and Seyli, the cousins were baptized, after a little bit of stress. These girls are pretty darn hilarious. They are nervous girls, and so they were totally shaking at the moment when they were going to head into the baptismal font. I had the opportunity to baptize the shorter one, Seyli, and let’s just say she was really nervous. To give a little bit of backup on the story, I have a perfect record in baptisms in the mission. To make it more clear, I haven’t had to repeat a single baptism due to missaid words or body parts outside of the water. Well...we had a potentially dangerous situation here with Seyli...because she was really nervous. But I wasn’t about to let that ruin my record (haha!) Long story short, my record still stands baby! When Seyli came up from the water, she was flailing around like someone that was about to drown, but the good thing is that she was baptized! It was some small fun we had during that day of the baptism. Also, the little girl of the Hna. Gissela, the less active lady that I had felt the impression to knock on her door a couple of weeks ago, got baptized. Her name is Lizzie, and she is a super cute 8 year old girl that loves the church and is super reverent (Primary worker’s dream girl). I am grateful that the Lord led me to that house, because the Hna. Gissela really has changed a lot. She is preparing to receive a calling soon, and has also been bringing all kinds of people to church with her on Sundays! She’s one of my favorite activated members!

Elder Torres and I held a small activity in the house of one of the families of the branch this week. It was a small little fireside type thing where we all chilled outside and watched The Testaments with a bunch of investigators. We had some serious technical difficulties at the start, and so while my companion tried to work things out, I decided to get things going with the activity. As an introduction to the activity, I read 3 Nephi 11 to the crowd, and tried to do a small little act out of it, so that the people could better understand the true beauty of when Christ came to America to bless the people of Bountiful. It was a great activity. The Testaments is a great movie, my second favorite that the church has made (only Together Forever beats it).

Last week, when we arrived at some members house to visit them and share a small message, we found a lady named Veronica who was visiting. She is a friend of the family, and also works with the lady we were visiting, Hna. Dilma. We took advantage of the situation and applied the lesson to Veronica as well. In the end it worked out really well, and she invited us to come to her house the next day to continue teaching. She is now becoming one of our progressing investigators. The real irony of the story is that, the other day, when we arrived to her house to continue teaching, she was with a cousin of hers who lives nearby. We took the time to invite her to listen as well, applied the lesson to her as well as Veronica, and she invited us to come to her house and teach more! I learned a great lesson that it is always important to invite everyone to participate in the lesson.

On Saturday, I finished reading the Book of Mormon again! I truly love reading the BoM, especially in Spanish. As I read through the final chapter of Moroni, I read the verses that we missionaries read over and over again with the investigators so that they will pray to know that the church is true. But I found something very interesting in the next couple of verses that I had never really seen before. In Moroni 10: 21-22 it says: “And except ye have charity (...faith, and hope) ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God. And if ye have no hope ye must needs be in despair, and despair cometh because of iniquity.”

That is something that we can all take to heart. In Spanish, the word despair is used a little bit more commonly than it is in English. But it is something that we all feel in certain points of our lives. Many times we might blame the feelings of despair on other people. We always try to convince ourselves that it’s THEM that have caused the feelings that we have. Sometimes, we may even go as far as blaming the feeling of despair on God. But the scriptures are clear, the feeling comes because of iniquity. If we have these types of feelings, all we need to do is kneel down, and ask God that he may show us our weakness (Ether 12:27) so that we may repent, and then they will become our strengths. I love the Book of Mormon, it teaches me so many things.

Thanks everyone for taking to time to read this jibberish that I write every week. I love you all.

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham