Querido Famili:

Mom you might be getting a little out of hand saying I am maturing. I’m La-Monty!

This week has been pretty good. I loved conference! We watched Saturday morning (in english), Sunday morning (in Spanish), Sunday afternoon (english) and 2nd half of priesthood session (Spanish). I thought I knew enough Spanish to understand but I definitely got more out of it when watching it in english rather than Spanish. I’m going to have to read them all over again in a couple months when we get the Liahona. We did get part of the Zapana family (from Peru) to go watch the Sunday morning session. It was very crowded. Everyone has to go to the stake center to watch and in between sessions; the whole stake center becomes a park for games and picnics everywhere. When I told my companion that, we just watch conference from my house before my mission, he told me, you’re a "trucho" (fake/wannabe) member, if you don’t watch it at the stake center. I’m "trucho" because it’s definitely way better at home! Oh, also something I learned is the songs are still in english, even with everything else in Spanish. I learned it during the intermediate hymn when I was the only one singing, it was pretty funny, I didn’t even think about it! From the talks I heard, President Eyring, from the Saturday morning session, was my favorite.

The work here has still been hard this week but we do have progressing investigators! The movie “The Testaments” has helped us. We watched it with 2 different families this week and of course they loved it. We watched it with the Zapana family Monday and then Thursday we went back and they asked for a baptismal date. We had the roughest day Thursday to earn it though! In the morning, for comp study, all we did was study the plan of salvation. It got me so excited to work and it’s a good thing too because I might not have made it through the day if we hadn’t. That morning we had two really good appointments set and they both fell through. All of our contacts that morning were people yelling at us or running away. We did manage to get in a house but at the end of the lesson we got told they didn’t want to know if what we taught was true. Ya tell me about it... I would have rather been rejected! But we kept going only to get more rejection after lunch and our planning session. We couldn’t find anyone home so we went tracting for a few hours, with all rejection. Finally we taught our lesson with the Zapana family. We started reading 1 Nephi 13, while we were waiting for the dad, because that’s where they are at in their reading and we ended up reading the whole chapter. It was so cool because it explained how they (the Zapana family) were descendents of the nephites and lamanites and how the book of mormon would be brought to them from gentiles (me and me companion) After we finished reading, kinda out of no- where, they told us their daughter wanted to get baptized. That she prayed and felt "tranquil and happy" So I told her we, the missionaries, could take care of that need for her and we scheduled her in for the 24th of April. Her mom also bore her testimony how she knew it was true and wanted to get baptized but can’t because she isn’t married and has to go back to Peru to get married  but she still wanted her daughter to get baptized. That is my ultimate favorite part of missionary work, when people tell about the answer they received to know its true!!!! It happened with another one of our investigators, Natilia (single mom of 2 kids living with her parents). It was so cool because she told us the exact same 2 words describing her answer!

These people are hard hearted, it’s true, but there are still the prepared ones. I’m glad I didn’t serve in Alaska because I don’t think I could put up with this forever. One of the scriptures I memorized this week was Alma 33:20-21. I memorized it because it talks about hard-hearted people. I also don’t like the competition from the other churches. It drives me insane all the stuff they say about us. It also made me really think about what it is that is different about our church. I finally came to the conclusion that it’s the spirit. Without the spirit we are just like all the other churches competing for members. I love Jacob 4:13 "he that prophesieth, let him prophesy to the understanding of men; for the spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. " Love you all!!

Elder Tryon