"Keep smiling and thumbs up!"

Hello familia!

¡Felicidades Kenny! ¡Que gusto ver de que se ha casado! Espero que siga feliz con su nueva esposa para siempre! Me hubiera gustado estar para el matrimonio pero sepa que me dio una sonrisa verle a usted y a Derek y Cody en la foto!

Wow can't believe all my cousins are getting engaged and married while I'm gone! Its gonna be way different jaja. Good to see also that Haley enjoyed Heritage Tours and made some good friends along the way. I was fortunate as well to make great friends on that trip, and now it seems like they are all on missions! Grandpa knew what he was talking about when he said that all of our group would baptize enough people to cross along the Susquehanna! And great news about the Braves and the Matt Garza trade, I remember we wanted him back when he was with the Rays, vamos para arriba!!! Keep me updated dad!

I just got done with a crazy game of basketball with another version of gringos vs latinos. We were pretty cocky heading into it obviously but it was actually a great game. The latinos recruited a 6´4 black superstar who is a member who can really ball. They gave it to us at the beginning but after while the law of percentages prevailed and we came out victorious. It was nice to not have to play soccer for once haha...

Well this was a super hectic week here in Ipiales! The last week of the month is always great, we have a goal as a mission to have 2 baptisms for every companionship in the mission in July, August, and 4 in Septiembre. And we were able to pull out 14 baptisms in the zone to just get 2.0 per companionship. It was pretty crazy that my companion and I had blessing to baptize 2 this week because we really had nothing to start out with. 

The miracles started by finding the Malez Family who had been inactive for a long while, and had a child at age 10 who hadn't been baptized. We thought of the opportunity we had to reactivate the family (the father of which has the Melchezedek Priesthood) and to baptize Dylan the little boy to complete the family. We had a miraculous lesson on Thursday with Dylan and his dad. The dad at first wanted nothing to do with us, and even avoided us on numerous occasions . But we just decided to start testifying, saying this is what needed to happen. The Spirit must have touched him because he immediately sat down to here what we were going to teach him and his child. We read Mosiah 4:14-15...

14 And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin, or who is the evil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteousness.  15 But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another.

We also shared Alma 36:3 and had him read it to his son Dylan changing the name Helaman for the name of his son.

3 And now, O my son Helaman, behold, thou art in thy youth, and therefore, I beseech of thee that thou wilt hear my words and learn of me; for I do know that whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day.

It was really powerful as he realized his duty as a father to lead his son in the right path. It was like a light filled him and he realized what he had to do. We then prepared Dylan for the interview, baptized him on Saturday and confirmed him on Sunday! And Juan Carlos (the father) came to every one. It was a miracle.

I love being a missionary because the Spirit is literally always with you. I never have to take my attention off what I am doing as a missionary and I feel His guidance more than ever.

The other baptism we had was a child of whose parents would have been baptized had they had been married. We were going to wait for them to get married to baptize them all together, but little 12 year old Michael couldnt wait and we all thought it be best that he start preparing for the priesthood while his parents figure everything out.

We haven't been able to see Daira Mejia this week as somehow she has managed to fall off the face of the earth. We have been trying to call but nothing happens and she is never home, we are praying that everything is okay and that nothing has hurt her progress. We also haven't been in touch with Juan Josè who was the miracle of last week, he also is hard to find these days.. but the work goes on and we are still finding like crazy building up that teaching pool!

Well thats it folks! Keep smiling and thumbs up! haha

Que pena de nuevo por la falta de fotos, la camara se rompió. (Sorry for the lack of photos, the camera broke)

Elder Eliason