Aug 31st

Hey family of mine!

Thanks for the e-mail Al, the rest of you have some work to do. ;)

This week has been awesome! Lets go back to monday. Remember how we were going to do our Moses skit. Well... we did... and... it rocked! The kids loved it. Not only did we dress up as Moses with beards and bathrobes, but we taught them the 10 Commandments using our fingers to help us remember. It was really fun. Plus I always see the kids practicing the fingers so they can remember. Tonight we're giving a lesson on The Armor of God. We're going to dress someone else up this time and throw "Firery Darts of the Adversary" at them. It should be a lot of fun.

This week we met a less active named Hilda Reyes. Spanish. We walked in and she started telling us about her niece that had served a mission and now lives in utah. We start talking. Replace her First Presidency pictures of Gordon B. Hinckley and James E. Faust with the correct ones. Apparently she doesn't go to church because her knee is bad and she can't walk much. So we're gonna see if we can get her a transportation to church from one of the members.

We had a great lesson with Stacy on Tuesday. Watched Finding Faith in Christ and bore our Testimonies. She loved it as always. This week we have it scheduled to bring a member so hopefully she start to realize we mean business, the business of saving souls. I'm really excited for that lesson this week. It's been awhile since we've really had the chance to teach her. Hopefully our member can really make a good friendship so we can get Stacy to church. I think if we can get her to church she'll be more receptive to the spirit when we're teaching.

We taught Salvador again on Tuesday. We watched the restoration DVD and he closed with prayer asking for help to get to church on sunday. It didn't happen but at least he has the desire. We're hopefully going to have another good lesson with him on tuesday. He seems really interested it's just tough to get in with him cause he is always at work. It's ok, the Lord will provide.

After we taught Salvador on Tuesday we stopped by his neighbor Miguel who we had taught before. Miguel wasn't home but we had a really nice talk with his wife, who turns out actually has a good friend that's a member. So we set up a time to teach her, and we did. It was really good. Next time we're going to teach the whole family of 4. Them two and two little girls. Plus they have some service we can do, some kind of shed they asked us to help them with. That's cool cause we never get service in our own area. Yeah, so hopefully we can start a regular schedule with the whole Florez Family.

So as far as the two boys go. Anthony had his interview with the Bishop on sunday, I was wondering how it was going to happen cause the Bishop only speaks a little English and Anthony only speaks a little Spanish. He did have to call in Anthony's cousin Bryan to help out with one thing. However, they hopped over the language barrier and Anthony is ready for Baptism on the 6th! He is so excited, it'll be cool to see him get baptized.

Sergio, he will have his interview tomorrow with our District Leader. Sergio needs it with the DL because he is 9 and Anthony is only 8 and also was blessed as a baby so he's a "child of record". That's why the Bishop had to interview him. Sergio is the most excited for the baptism. They came to a service we had yesterday, and Sergio had a lot of questoins. Some relevant to the service, most not. He likes to aske questions like if God lived with the Dinosaurs. He reminds me of Eli. Sergio asked me to baptize him and Elder Amundsen is going to baptize Anthony. We tried to get either Bryan or their Grandpa to do it, neither felt worthy. It'll be fun though. So there's 2 we'll have on sunday.

Our other Investigator with a set date is Jose. We taught him last week and found a good way to teach so he can understand it. We're going to try and get a BOM on CD for him soon so we can give him some commitments. Our only other problem with him is his drunk neighbor who likes to interrupt our lessons asking dumb pointless questions. Satan is definately doing his part on this one.

We got a message on our phone the other day. Remember our friend Edwin who moved away. We'll last week we both sent him letters because we hadn't heard anything from him and it had been a really long time. Well the same day we sent the letter, he had called us. He's getting Baptized!!! On the 6th. So we'll have 3 baptisms on sunday. Plus he wants Elder Amundsen to do it. How cool is that! Who knows maybe in a year I can watch him and his wife get sealed! It's gonna be a little tought to work out getting to both of the Services. The zone Edwin lives in just happens to be in the most southern border of the mission. So it's going to take some carefull planning but I know we can get it. WoooHooo!!

This week has been so good, it seems like the fruits of our labors are strating to show. Keep praying, I know it's been helping a lot. A lot to look forward to in September. Baptisms, oh yeah and the spanish ward is doing somekind of Family Night music recital. They asked me to sing in it. First of all it was going to be a Duet. Now it looks like it might be a Duet and a Solo. We'll see it's not til the end of the month anyway.

That about does it for this week. I hope all is going well at home, Mom are you back in school yet? How's the new house Shaina? I got the pictures of the set. Good work boys! Of course I'm sure pictures don't do it justice, but it still looked really cool from what I saw.

Love you, pray for you

Elder Groves