{It iS ACtuALLy ReaLLy ExciTiNG}

Familia!

Soooo...false alarm with the baby, girls camp, bobsledding, and marsh is driving?? wow. I want to tell you all about some experiences that we´ve had in the past couple of days. I´m pretty sure I told you about Wilfredo, the guy that we contacted in a Subway. He came to church yesterday with his two kids...Wilfredo jr. and Jotam! I was way excited to have them come. And there was another couple that was there, Rosa and Edwin Acosta. Rosa and Edwin have to get married but they are doing really well and they were happy to be in church yesterday. Edwin and Rosa want to get baptized. They´ll just have to overcome some obstacles, but Rosa is really helping Edwin to stop drinking and focus on their family. They are pretty worried about their money situation, but I told them about the Salinas family in Santiago (who are getting sealed on the 10 of August!).

And then, last night Wilfredo came outside after we had left and told us to wait because he wanted to tell us something. He started into this long story about how he had been in love with a girl a very long time ago, and how she left to the States, but came back a year ago and they came into contact. He ended up meeting up with her in David and they had been talking and even going out to lunch, etc. All this while he´s married with two kids, as well as this girl he is seeing. The didn´t go any farther than that he said but I don´t think he really understands the seriousness of it all. He said that he loved her a lot. We asked him if he loved his wife and he didn´t seem to excited about it. He said he just loves her as a companion and as the mother of his kids, but he needs to develop that love for her. It was a very intense situation. We told him that he had to go inside and tell his wife that he loves her before going to sleep, but obviously we know what we need to focus on with him now...saving his relationship with his wife and helping him understand that he CAN´T cheat on her...

We really felt good about everything. That he feels a desire to be with his family and be a good father. It´s just sad to see people wasting their lives focused on the things that cannot bring happiness. I feel really good about the work we are doing. This past week we had a training meeting in the Chitré zone. We were working on what we were going to teach them until about 3 30 the night before the meeting (let´s just say that there´s usually not a ton of time to sit down and prepare these things). And then we got up at 5 30 am so we could drive out to Penenomé with President. It was about a 2 hour drive. So I was a little tired while we taught but I felt like it was a spiritual meeting. I taught about asking inspired questions to your investigators.

That´s what this change is going to be like...we´ll have two capacitation meetings each week with the zones in the mission to go over teaching principles and talk about the state of the mission. It is actually really exciting. The day to day work here is honestly always different. Sometimes we´re helping missionaries move out of their houses into other areas...because no one else has a truck to do it, or taking missionaries to the hospital at 11 pm. Jeez there´s this missionary named Elder Saavedra that had to get to the hospital as fast as possible a couple of days ago because he wasn´t really breathing and he had severe pain in his kidneys. I was honestly scared while we were driving there...but when we got there, turns out he was fine. But he had tons of tests and a 3,600 dollar stay. Haha it was fun...but i don´t think he´s happy about all the tests they had to do...kidney tests...I´ll let you use your imagination.

Anyway, back to Wilfredo. I felt as we were talking to him that Christ really did suffer for what he was going through and that he could make things right if he really wants to. He just has to repent.

I love the people in our area. Sure wish we had more time to teach them but I like the routine here.

Love you all!

Elder Henrie