I'm staying!

January 6, 2013

Well we have transfers comin up tomorrow and all I wanted was to stay here in the El Paso 1st ward and....I'm staying! My comp and I were convinced I was leaving. I woulda been soo sad! But I guess my work here is not yet finished which is totally okay with me! I've been here for 7 months now and have loved every minute of it! But it is gonna be that much harder to leave next transfer. I'm pretty sure I wont stay another one lol But its definitely happened before! So this last week was definitely the slowest week I've ever had on my mission. I think in total we had like 18 lessons cancel on us. But it was new years so we kinda figured it would happen. Then I got pretty dang sick but luckily the members in this ward are awesome and totally hooked it up with some good stuff haha Idk what it was but it sure did work! lol So even though last week was super slow and we didn't teach very many lessons and I was sick it was still a wonderful week. The university sisters in my district had a baptism. It was a girl that we had to hand over to them cause the university ward was better for her. But it still never fails to amaze me at how prepared people are for this gospel. Also we had an investigator who dropped us come to church on Sunday and totally wants to start taking the lessons again. She's Methodist and I guess she felt like she needed to go to a Methodist church again so she went for a few months and I guess it just felt really empty to her after coming to The Lord's church. We were so excited for her when we first started teaching her and now its even more exciting that she has completely made up her mind for which church she want to join :) We have lots of investigators we are working with that really want to learn. And now its the new year so people are wanting to change their life around. We also have this investigator who has read the Book of Mormon cover to cover and completely believes everything we teach him and that this is the restored church of Christ but he is a casual drinker and just cant give up that life style. Anyway we have been making commitments with him where we give up something for a week if he gives up alcohol. Its been pretty fun actually and hes been doing good. Anyway we committed him to stop drinking at midnight on new years so he can start the new year off without drinking. We went back new years day and he clearly did not keep his commitment. He was pretty hung over and had us come back two days later. So we did and he was in even worse shape than a few days before. I actually felt pretty bad for him cause he lives alone and doesn't have a car. He was very very sick and didn't have any kind of food he could keep down so he wanst eating and was dry heaving. He was in terrible shape. So we went and got him some chicken noodle soup and saltine crackers and what not. My comp and I were sayin how this was totally a sign for him to stop drinking and he better realize it. So when we get back he totally says, "I think I'm done drinking guys I'm taking this as a sign." We both almost leapt for joy but we had to hide it lol But was soon as we left we let it all out haha it was soooo awesome! So he should be getting baptized soon :) Well I hope everyone had a safe new years! And I hope everyone is starting out the new year and a good note :)

Love Elder Jaden Espinoza