August 24

Good Morning!

It's Elder Green again. How is everyone? I hope that things are going well back there at home. Life in the field is really great. I've had some interesting experiences this past week.

We are currently working with the Espinosa family. The Mom, Mayra, is a super less-active member who was baptized 3 years ago. She has two daughters, Ivanova (22) and Priscilla (15). Priscilla right now is in Ecuador. The family is Ecuadorian and Spanish. They have dual citizenship. They have lived in Chicago for a short time and were first introduced to the Gospel in Spain. Right now Mayra's sister, Ivonne (17), is visiting from Spain. We haven't met Mayra's husband yet, but her and Ivonne's dad is in town and he's a really cool guy. Ivonne wants him to let her stay in Chicago and not return to Spain because she really likes Chicago. When we found them two weeks ago they seemed to have a lot of potential, and Ivonne seemed interested in the Gospel. Last week we invited Mayra, Ivanova and Ivonne to Church on sunday, and it was a really powerful lesson. On sunday we waited and waited but they never showed up. For me it was one of the times when I have been most disappointed by the actions of an investigator. We passed by them on monday and it seems that they didn't put enough importance in coming to church on sunday and did other things. However, Ivonne seems really curious and really wants to learn more. So we are going to work with her a lot. We think that she could be our next baptism, the only problem is that she may easily have to go back to Spain. So we are praying a lot that things go well and she can stay. We also are going over to their house today because Mayra and Ivonne's Dad really likes to play basketball and so do all of them, so we're going to go play with them for a while so that they have a chance to connect to us in a more relaxed way. We think that with friendship we could see them all get baptized and that Mayra will get re-activated. That would be another 4 or 5 baptisms, which would be awesome.

Also, on sunday we were knocking some doors, and a lady opened up. As she spoke to us, her son, Manuel (~30), wanted to speak with us. Manuel is a really great guy. He wants to quit drinking, as his drinking habit got him hospitalized for two days and he was actually in jail for another 3. He got out about a week ago, and has been going through a rough time because the withdrawals are really bad. I never saw anything like it in Life-Line. The past week has been killing him (almost literally). He invited us in and said that he hadn't been very religious in his life but that he had a near-death experience during all of this that caused him to realize that God was there and that he needed to prepare himself because he realized that he wasn't ready to die. So we talked to him on sunday about the atonement and him and his mom read the Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet, which helped him out. We met with him again yesterday (tuesday) and he was excited to see us. We didn't have a whole lot of time so we helped him fill out a baptismal calendar and we are going to pass by him like every day from here till he gets baptized on September 24. Today we are going to teach him the Word of Wisdom and try to help him to make a plan to overcome alcoholism. He's a really nice guy but the alcohol has really damaged him, he has a bit of a tough time understanding the things that we teach him. We are really excited to get to work with him and help him to understand his purpose in life and how he can prepare himself to return to his Father in Heaven.

I thought that his baptism on the 24th would be cool because it'll be a day-late birthday present! Speaking of which, I realized yesterday that my birthday was 1 month away and my return date was exactly 3 months away. Man time has gone too fast.

Oh one downer happened this week. We went over to a member's house, and Elder Lemke has been on this diet. Well we've both been watching what we eat because we want to eat healthy. Now this member doesn't have money. Like any. And so for him, food is a great blessing to even have in his home. Well he started giving us some food, which was good, but I started to realize that it was making my throat feel funny. Elder Lemke decided after two tacos that he was refusing anything more and that he wasn't going to eat anything. The hermano had made 8 additional tacos. I ended up eating them, even though my throat started to burn and I looked to Elder Lemke to ask him to eat, but he refused. The member is a bit sentimental and wanted us to eat it or we would offend him (it's common among hispanics). So I ate it all, got overfull, had a slight alergic reaction, and threw up for the next two hours. It was miserable. Elder Lemke realized that he had been really insensitive and felt really bad, and it stopped us from working for most of the day. Today should be better though and I feel fine, total recovery. Sleep is a beautiful thing.

Love ya!