September 9th!

What a crazy week!!
Lets start off with the baptisms on sunday. All three went great! First off we went Edwins which was in the gorgeous coast city of San Pedro. We got there a lot earlier then we had expected which was good. It gave us time to wright him a letter of congratulations, since we don't really have much money to get him anything. We did do a rubbing of our name tags which I think was pretty cool. His wife Vanessa started crying when he went under. She later bore her testimony and said she's so happy to see him make this step. Even though it took 2 years and 6 sets of missionaries. It really was a really nice service. We bounced really quickly from there to get back to our ward baptisms that both Elder Amundsen and I were preforming. We got there to find out our investigators weren't even there yet. So we went and got changed then when the boys finnaly arrived we could breathe. They all went well, I baptized Sergio first, stuttered at the prayer in Spanish but made it through the first time, then Elder Amundsen of course. I was talking to the boys afterwards and Anthony said, He felt good, and different. That kid is going places! Sergio asked if he could be baptized again, I told him when he's 12. I sang at the service, Venid a Cristo, Come unto to Jesus. So Sunday was a really really good day.
Monday we went and visited our friend Rosy, we did this because one of the other Elders who had had dinner with her earlier that week said that she told them her husband was going to move out so she could get baptized. Woohoo!!! Sad... but... Woohooo!!! We went and talked to her, it's not all completely worked out, we still need to talk with him. The hard thing is you can never tell when he's serious and when he's not. Hopefully we can get something worked out this week.
We had a good lesson with Salvador this week. He told us he was going to try to come to church. Unfortunately he got sick and has been sick for a couple days. We have an appointment with him tomorrow and so hopefully we can work some things out.
Stacy is the lesson of the week!! It started with a meeting our zone had with President Blackburn, he told us we need to commit baptism on the 1st lesson. That's tough. Not only that but he said all investigators who don't have a baptismal date need one in the next appointment. That's Stacy. So we went and talked to her about the Book of Mormon, while talking and reading she actually brought up Authority. So... we extended the commitment. She sat there... thought about it.... we let the Spirit soak in... then she said she would have to pray about it. It's not a yes but it's not a no. Aftward we started talking a little more... she did a little more thinking... then she asked "So if what your saying is true... everyone needs to be a Mormon?" Our member that was there testified and said yes. Awesome!!! The spirit was the strongest I've ever felt it in a lessson. She definately understands the need of the restoration of that priesthood authority! I can't wait til tuesday!
Work is really picking up, we are doing less tracting and more appointments. Unfortunately we will probably be dropping Jose this week, and maybe the Florez family cause we can't get in contact with them and they stand us up on appointments. However we've got some other potentials we've come across and some good less actives to work with. Plenty for us here. Just keep praying that they all can come to know the truth and have the deseo!! (desire!) without the knowledge and desire the spirit gives, nothing is going to happen.
One funny thing that did happen this week, and I thank my animal loving and skills from my mom for it, was while we were tracting we came across a house with a big black dog. we approach the fence, as does the dog, I stuck my hand out to let it sniff me. It did and then started liking my hand. So I opened the gate so we could go knock on the door. My companion isn't that much of a dog lover. He still didn't want to go in. While we sat outside talking about it, the dog pushed the gate open the rest of the way then took off down the street!! We didn't want to introduce ourselves as "The missionaries who lost your dog" So we went after it! He would stop, pee on something, then run down the street to pee on something else. Every time we got near, it would take off farther down the street. This patter continued for 10 minutes. Finallay we get the inbetween us and where his home is almost a block down. So he starts running the other way, eventually he stopped and just trotted back to his yard, walked through the gate, and started his nap in the shade. We knocked on the door and no one was home. Grandpa was right, there are a lot of dogs in LA, unfortunately this one likes to drives us crazy!
That day we talked to all our visits about dogs. I heard about BYU yesterday at our meeting with the President. GO COUGS!!!! That's so cool, after the meeting we went to wendy's for lunch and saw a poster for the new NCAA football game for X-box, and who's on the cover but one of the Utah Utes! That's was fun to see, my companion and I had a lot of Utah pride yesterday.
Well that's all about that's happening here in LA, we had ashes on our car a couple days ago from the forest fires. I hope all is going well at home. I love you all and miss you all!

Elder Groves