Monday: Monday evening we visited two investigators, Nubia and Areolfo, and had a good discussion with them about the apostasy and why there's so many churches. They are an older couple that fairly recently came from Columbia and were investigating there before they came here and we picked them up. It's hard to find time to visit them though, because they are only available some evenings, which is our busiest time, so it's hard.
Tuesday: We had District Meeting and I went on Exchanges again. I went up to the same area again, but this time with a different Elder, Elder Camper, who's one of the Zone Leaders. I spent the time in English again which was nice. We spent a lot of time in the afternoon helping to move a family, which was a good opportunity to do some physical activity that wasn't biking and wasn't making my legs and rear sore! We had a sweet dinner with a less-active couple that are pretty cool. They're on their way back to activity and really have a growing testimony of the Church. The best part was that we visited a family that they had found the last week on exchanges who the parents, we found out, are actually both already baptized, but that weren't ever really strong in the Church. The awesome part though is that their 10 year old daughter is super amazing! She has a better testimony of reading the Bible and praying and about Jesus Christ than almost all of our other investigators and she told us when baptism was mentioned that she wanted to be baptized, without even being asked! I don't know if I'm conveying how awesome she was, but just take the most golden investigator you've ever seen or heard of and put them in a 10 year old girl and this is her (that might be a slight exaggeration, but...). And the whole family was at church on Sunday!
Wednesday: After visiting a few people in the morning (mostly visiting doors of people that weren't home...) I went back to my normal area and we went tracting for the afternoon. We found a few cool people, including a guy named Timiteo who has great faith in Christ and was super interested in reading the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately he wasn't there when we went back, but hopefully we can catch him home some other time. We went to dinner with the branch president, President Mejia, to a Thai place called Bay Thai that was SUPER yummy. We also got to visit a less active named Jorge who is really smart and knows English very well. He really enjoys answering Spanish questions, so he and I get along really, really well!
Thursday: We went tracting in the afternoon again, but didn't have as much success. It's not that we didn't find people, but that they were less interested in having us come back. In the evening we had multiple appointments, but unfortunately they all fell through :( That happens quite a bit though; the hispanics work so much that they schedule appointments for the little bit of free time they have, but then forget the appointment (which I understand) and have other things that they have to do. It just makes it hard for having investigators that are progressing toward baptism and activity in the Church.
Friday: A lot of the same as Thursday; we had a few appointments, but they all fell through.
Saturday: We had an awesome lesson with a couple that we found on Tues./Thurs. named Maria and Manuel. They are both interested, particularly the father, Manuel, and they are both "soft" committed to baptism! I just really hope that we can actually see them the next time. Then in the evening we went to a wedding that was held at the church that had some good food (my favorite was the jalepenos with tuna in them).
Sunday: This Sunday was a Branch Conference which was great, but we didn't have any investigators come to Church, which is soo disappointing. But we had a great dinner/FHE with a less-active about the Temple and we had a good lesson with a girl we talked to on Saturday.
That's what my week's been like, and I hope y'all have had a good one too. Hopefully I'll be able to put some pictures up sometime soon!
-Elder Whitaker