Email January 20, 2014

Hello from Puerto Rico! I wish I could write to you and tell you we had an exciting week, but it wasn't. Haha. Some good and cool things happened this week but it wasn't necessarily this super great week. One of the big things we're struggling with and wanting to change is getting the ward more involved in missionary work in their personal lives. A giant difference between Aibonito and Bayamon is that the members here don't have the same urgency to do the work that the members in Aibonito had. The members in Aibonito were in danger of closing their branch. Meanwhile, the members here in Bayamon have more pride that they are a "strong ward." I've seen it before on the island: there are wards that have people who want to partake in the work with you, but a lot of wards are stuck in a state of "all is well in zion" because there are a lot of them so they don't try to reactivate or baptize. It's frustrating. Another thing is that there are a lot of members and missionaries who don't really understand what it means to be involved in the work of salvation. It's not just about the members leaving with the missionaries for lesson or members giving missionaries references. It's more about church leaders seeking the Lord's guidance, making plans, and then using all of our efforts to bring people back. That is the part that most people miss: they just think they will go visit people, or they think that the missionaries will find people, or whatever. It's more of a cooperative effort between members and missionaries, backed by the influence of the spirit of revelation. In terms of our investigators, there is nothing exciting happening. We're still on step one: Finding. Carlos is really great, but we haven't been able to teach him. He's not a really busy guy, but things have come up to keep us from being able to teach him. We are supposed to meet with him on Wednesday, and I hope it will go through. One of our investigators is not really progressing. The elders found her before I got here and set up a baptismal date with her. She has a desire to learn and even a will to be baptized, but she is the kind of person that is really laid back and doesn't put a ton of importance to things. She's about to lose her light because she doesn't work, and even though it stresses her out she doesn't seem to do much about it. She tries to make crafts and sell them, and it seems to work out for her, but it's funny. I don't know how much desire I have to teach her anymore, but then again, it's not my desire that matters. The Lord works miracles in the hearts of people. We had stake conference this week, and it was really awesome. The stake presidency talked about the work of salvation. They said, "We are inviting you to repent and become more involved in the work of salvation." Hopefully I'll have more exciting news for you next week. I love you all! P.S. If you go to LDS.org, there's an I'm a Mormon video of Lesly Toro on the first page. I know that couple. You should watch it. Elder Cevering