Email May 6, 2013

Hello Family! This past week was a very successful week. Our area is doing really well. We are seeing a lot of success in the campo. We have more than 20 people to go back and visit this week. We have gone with three different members up to the campo, and they took us to their friends and family. We have 4 families to teach, about 8 couples, and the rest are just people we contacted in the street: and that's just in the area called Cacao. There are more in an area called Carruzo, and we received 4 references in an area called Santa Cruz. It's been incredible to see how the campo has just opened to us. I really know the Lord has prepared it for this time. The ward calls Elder Smith and I the "pioneers" because missionaries have never focused their work on the campo. They've obviously given us their support, so it's really exciting. The other two assignments that we have are to find the less-actives and inactives, and to teach the men in Pontezuela. We have a lot of people to set up lessons with in Pontezuela this week. One of them is Milton: he's a young guy with a really young daughter. He's divorced--because he's been drinking and smoking and his wife was sick of it--so he has really been struggling with some things. The gospel really clicks with him, but he doesn't get how it really can help him. It's kind of like he loves the idea of the gospel helping him, but he still doesn't have that faith to really apply the blessings of the gospel in his life. We were visiting with him the other day, and his face was all scarred because he'd been drunk and he'd fallen on the floor. He said, "I can't meet with you guys right now, I need to go sleep off some of this stress." It was interesting. I really want to help him understand and apply the atonement. As far as the work with the less-actives and inactives go, we actually had a good number of them at church yesterday. It was really cool. We've been able to find and meet with a lot of them. But the members in the campo are a lot harder to find: people protect them from us. Haha. The ward's been searching for this guy named Juan for years, but apparently no one will tell the missionaries or members where he lives when they are up looking for him. And they know he still lives where he always has because he's been "sighted" by members. It's like Big Foot. I'm determined to find him. Last Saturday we went to a ward member's house up in Cedro--the furthest part in the campo from the chapel--and they gave us spaghetti. It was so good :) Like I've said, I miss pasta a lot, so I always ask for it when the members want to cook for us. But usually they just have rice and beans and chicken, which is really great too. Speaking of which, I was invited by a man to go eat with him this week in his house--random memory. Anyway, we were at these members' house. They are a really cool older couple named the Llanos (it would be like saying Jawnos) who are really strong members of the church. Milagros Llanos is the relief society president, who has really warmed up with us and to the work--and Hector Llanos is the stake family history director. And they've been in the ward for years. Hector was baptized before blacks even had the priesthood, so he has a really strong testimony. I felt like I was just with some best friends, which I really enjoyed. It was so relaxed and so friendly. I was able to really come to be good friends with the whole family, which was a good experience. I'm almost 20 :) Well, I will talk to you on Mother's Day. I will be calling around 6:30 Puerto Rico time, so that should be 4:30 Utah Time. I'll be doing SKYPE, not just the phone. You'll get to see the chapel where we go to church. Super exciting. Love you! Elder Cevering