E-Mail 7-13-09

Hey Family
So how is everyone? How is life? Things here have been good. The weather is not bad, it's not very hot and it didn't rain everyday this week which is super good.

This week has been good. I baptized this lady named Angelica. It was such a cool feeling after I baptized her, I felt like I had been baptized again. It felt like God had forgiven me for all the times in my life I have fallen short. It was cool too cuz she picked me to baptize her which made me feel really good. She was so funny, she had a problem with smoking so we had her stop over a 2 week period. She had 3cigarettes for 4 days, 2 for 4 days then 1 for 4 days. When she was down to one she took the cigarette and divided it in to 3rds so she smoked a third in the morning a third after lunch and a third after dinner. It was so cool to see her trying so hard. I loved baptizing her, there really is no feeling like that!

So our turtles...I gave them all away. We are not supposed to have them and I'm trying so hard to be obedient, so I gave them all away. So ya my turtle adventure is over, I figure I have my whole life to have turtles and only 19 and a half months left to serve God so I need to serve the very best I can so the turtles had to go.

Next week I get to baptize again, it is a guy named Felix he is a super cool guy and I'm way excited to baptize him on Sunday, it will be cool. I've got the prayer down in Spanish, it was super hard but I memorized it. My Spanish is really starting to get better. People are starting to understand me and I understand almost everything they say which is good so I'm super happy!!!

I think my weight is starting to balance out which is good cuz my baptism pants are huge. They were falling off when I was in the water which is very bad.

We were supposes to baptize three other people on Sunday. It is a family but the dad drank so we couldn't and the wife and daughter want to get baptized at the same time as him so we have to wait till the 26th to baptize them. But it's OK that will mean I baptized 3 weeks in a row which will be good.

OK so there are these kids here and their a gang and they were staring at us. I thought we were going to get killed so I decided to go make friends with them, so we went and talked to them and were super nice. Well now they love us. They always talk to us and ask us if we want to drink and smoke weed with them, it's so funny. We took pics with them, it's all these guys smoking weed and drinking and two missionaries. We call them our hood!!! They are super cool to us now so I'm glad we decided to be brave and just go talk to them cuz now we don't have to be scared they will rob us or anything which is good.

That's about all that's new here.

I love you guys tons thanks for everything!!!
Elder Fackler