Hola!!

We had a baptism this week, his name is Juan Daniel. He’s a cool guy. He proves that you don’t need to know Spanish to contact people. He was walking up the street carrying a box of fruit when the idea came to my mind to ask him if we could help him. So I did, I tried to say ¨do you need help? ¨ In Spanish but I didn’t change my voice right so he understood it as ¨you need help¨. He stopped, looked at me and started talking. I didn’t understand a word but I pretended I understood. He just went on and on and on, eventually my comp Elder Figueroa came and rescued me. Juan asked for one of our pamphlets, so we gave him one about the Restoration, and set a date for when we could come teach him.

After we went our different ways, I asked my comp if we were really going to go and teach him. Because something just seemed off about him. I’ve talked to drunks before and we haven’t gone to teach them because they don’t really mean (or remember) what they say when they are drunk. When I talked to my comp I found out that he was sober. I am getting better at telling when someone is drunk or high. He had lived a rough life, but was now only smoking normal cigarettes. This is awesome because it meant he was actively trying to change his life.

So when we went to teach him he was excited to see us again and to get to talk with us. He had read much if not the entire pamphlet we gave him. And he wouldn’t stop talking. He was so excited to learn more but wouldn’t stop talking long enough to for us to teach him, so we had to interrupt him a ton to teach him. But he was thirsty for the gospel. So we invited him to church and told him that we would have a friend of ours (the young man on the right in the picture) come and pick him up and take him to church he said ok, but wasn’t there when he went to pick him up. It kind of bummed me out a little. So latter that next week we went and talked to him, and gave him a Book of Mormon. You should have seen it. He was so excited when we gave it to him; he kicked himself back into his chair and shouted for joy! It was cool.

So we made a goal for him to quit smoking and get baptized he was really excited about that. We told him that he needed to come to church before he could get baptized and told him where the church was and what time he needed to be there, and set everything up for that. But he didn’t show up again. We really got bummed out about that, but with about 20 min left of sacrament one of the other elders said ¨isn’t that your investigator? ¨ It was. He found his own way there which made my day. So we invited him to come and watch a baptism that was for Mariana and her mom. He thought that was awesome. He even asked if there was a way for him to get baptized sooner.

So the next Sunday we went to pick him up. Because of General Conference we were meeting in a different building. He wasn’t there. He had left and gone on his own to church. We didn’t know what church he went to because the building was different. So we went and tried to hunt him down. We were a little freaked out. But somehow he had found his way to the stake center and was waiting patiently for Conference to start. The baptism was awsome we had a member baptize him because for some reason the Mission Pres. wants members to baptize.

We finished up my first transfer I still have the same comp and the same area because I’m new.
Love you forever

Elder Sorensen