May 21, 2012

Family! How's it going? So guess what, changes just happened again and..I'm exactly where I was! Which is what I was hoping for, I really can't complain about the area I've got right now. Zacatecas is the least hot part of the mission which is definitely a big deal, plus a solid ward, good investigators, food, nice house, and not that many dogs in the steet. Win-win situation. I'm still working with my companion Elder Pineda, which is totally cool, he's a good guy. So yup, it looks like I'll be here for one change more, and then off to my very last area. Sort of nuts, right? It's so weird being on the last leg of the Mission, seeing all your buddies going home and realizing that the Mission actually does end. I don't mean to sound like I'm out the door by any means, but I guess it does have a little bit of a different feel. In a good way, like in a "wow, I gotta take advantage of the time I've got left" kinda way.

And I think I've been doing an alright job lately, we baptized somebody this week! Manuel was such an out of nowhere, total miracle baptism. We baptized his wife and two kids, and we we're thinking the whole time that we weren't exactly his favorite people. We tried talking to him before and introduce what the church is all about, but he really wasn't that interested. He was about as interested in the church as Greg probably is with my emails by now. But anyways, one day we just got to talking with him, he started to open up a little bit, and within 10 minutes he was super comitted to being baptized. I really don't know what happened, but it just sort of worked out perfectly. He asked me to baptize him, and I told I would love to, but I didn't know if I would have changes or not, so he decided to take all the lessons in basically 2 days in order to be baptized last Saturday. Success! Everything went great, and the water was only sort of freezing. It really does feel good to have baptisms as a Missionary, concrete evidence that you're doing something right. Our next main investigators are Irma, Valeria, and Diego. It's a family of three we've been teaching a lot lately, and they're totally awesome. Lately we've been visiting them with a member named Javier, he is an ex-catholic priest from the Catholic church, and is probably in the top 10 coolest people I've met in my entire life. He was the man with the plan answeing all these questions Irma and her family had (pretty much everyone here has been Catholic all their lives), and it was tons of fun to be watching it happen. Javier has some of the funniest stories ever about his Priest days. Here's one: so when Javier just got pumped up to priest, the other priests decided to play a trick on him on his first day on the job when he had to do 5 catholic masses. They told him that when he did the sacrament, he had to drink the whole cup of wine (and not just a little sip like normal). 5 full cups of wine later, Javier was totally out of it. Apparently no one understood the last mass he did. Love the man.

So thats kinda whats going on right now for me. I'm still kickin' as District Leader, but my district might be a little bit harder this time around, got some new iffy missionary, but we'll figure it out. Today was pretty laid back, since it's change day, pretty much everyone is hanging out at the bus station. So we got together with the other misisonaries from Guadalupe and we shot hoops for hours. Thats one of my favorite things in this life. It was cool to hangout with my buddy, Elder Myers, he's from LA and we got some Laker chit-chat going on. Good times. Speaking of Lakers...3-1! Man, what a bummer. I knew we were at 2-1 a couple of days ago, and we totally could have tied the series! Man, not lookin' so good in Lakerland right now. But hey, we've seen people come back from being down 3-1 before, so there is still hope family. Either way, I really hope we make some cool off-season moves this summer, we need some new blood. Dwight Howard and Steve Nash would be nice, right? It'll be awesome.

So besides that, whats going on at home? It's peoples birthdays around this time, right? Yes, Josh, Randy, and Cameron! Happy Birthday, you guys rock. How old is everyone turing? I want to Josh is turning..4. Cameron is turning...9. and Randy is turning.....45. Just kidding, wait, how old is Randy? In my mind Mike has been 36 for the past 5 years or so, and that would make Randy...37? I have no idea. Either way, happy birthday! And lets not forget Sister Kump! Happy Birthday Sister Kump. Thanks for reminding me Mom. Other than that, anything new going on at home? Sounds like everything is pretty laid-back and thats exactly how it should be. I hope people are still getting pumped up Church stuff, because if there is anything I've learned on my mission it's that when we do what the Lord wants, everything is better, and when we don't, not so much. It's really not that complicated, just go ti church, follow the commandments, pay you're tithing, live it up in your calling, and life is good. I'm looking forward to doing all these things, all of my life. Take it easy Family, golf and snolf, I love all of you.

Love,
Elder Abbott