Intense Week- the word used most in his letter!

I love my family!

Well this was quite the intense week.  I was going to write the letter hand written but due to various difficulties with other missionaries I couldn't quite get it done. So I'll just jump in the week.

Monday night was super intense... missionary problems with not following rules.  Nothing makes me sadder than seeing missionaries who don't get the mission! Sticking it to Presidente doesn't have anything to do with him! It is the Lord who works through him.  So this week was full of a lot of that.  We had to bring a missionary to stay with us for several day because he was in trio and was one of the seven found.  I know that using internet isn't the worst thing in the world but it wasn't what they did, but how they reacted that really bothered me.  There are consequences to our actions! 

Elder Cotton- first companion now Elder Clay's A.P (Assistant to President)

Tuesday was pretty intense.  In the morning we went to Tatumbla to help "la abuela" clean our her garden.  That pile was pretty big.  The space from which we took the yard trash wasn't that big either! We got a huge lunch adn were able to get back to our are a in time to work. It was a stressful week for us too because we had planned, by command of the Stake and Mission Presidentes,a stake baptismal service for this weekend so all week we were worrying and working with our people and constantly seeing what we needed to do to help the zone acheive their goals.  It was a week of miracles.  I know that I have repeated this a lot in the past few letters but really focusing on the individual and carefully explaining that baptism really is the literal first step to getting more blessings has been the key in this area.  I feel like I understand the purpose of baptism better now.  We are not expected to be perfect before or immediately after baptism. This gospel is a process and constant fight of growh and change and improvement.  

Wednesday was a fun day.  We did a visit with Dasael, the 21 year old who got baptized (future missionary!) who is super positive.  He has been a long time investigator and last week we told him that his desire to be baptized would not always be there and in order to enjoy the blessings of the gospel he needed to be baptized.  He has  gone to church every Sunday for the past several months. All we did was explain to him that if we are ready to make a covenant with God we should not postpone it because Satan doesn't like when we do that.  That was the first time in my mission that I mentioned that Satan bound Joseph Smith right before his prayer and the First Vision.  Right before we are about to make inportant steps toward God, Satan tries his hardest to stop us.  That is what he needed to here.  Then we had to go to our secret banks and government buildings to get some wedding papers taken care of.  Our afternoon was fun.  After doing a few more visits we went to dinner with Elder Cotton to a family who lives in my are but who Cotton baptized in a former area.  They moved here a few months ago.  Super awesome.  

la abuela de la misión" the only female that can hug the missionaries!

Thursday was an intense day.  It was the day that we had to go get the missionary in trio and put him with us.  He didn't have a companion since his comp got mini change for girl problems.  We left him in trio with the others because their houses and areas are literally adjacent.  But it was time for their fun to end.  We had our district meeting and our correlación misional which was helpful.  We have an awesome ward mission leader. (Side apostasy note.  Here there are too many members who are leaders who live outside of their assigned ward boundaries. e.g. our ward mission leader and EQ pres live in another stake. There is a ward here whose bishop lives outside of his ward boundaries. What is happening?) So it was a busy day, again getting people prepared for baptism. 

Friday was another insane day.  I went to go to an interview then met my companion in the office, talked with Cotton about going to college in the US, we got baptism clothes, grabbed and quick lunch then went back to our area.  In the process of baptizing people there are three stressful parts: the interview, the baptism, and the confirmation.  Friday was the interview part. 

Saturday was also stressful the problem was that without people getting on time and we ended up starting late and having many small disasters, but Dad, like the experience you counted for the stake and the investigators and the people who got baptized the problems didn't seem to bother so much.  All the missionaries were traumatized but that is much less important.  The Lord has blessed us.  We pretty much opened the area here.  1/3 of the baptisms was an eternal investigator but the other two were ours.  The Lord is blessing me for my faithfulness in Miraflores.

Sunday went well.  We had all the confirmations taken care of.  

Time is short, again, I am frustrated that the plancheros (slang we use for disobedient missionaries) are the reason that I can't finish.

Love and miss you so much

Thanks for all that you do for me.

Letters from Stephanie Davis and Dannee!

Miss you lots

Elder Clay