Email July 1, 2013

Hello Family! Well, this week was pretty great! I was really excited to send you those pictures last week and, unfortunately, I don't have time to send more. Today is Canada day: that means all the Puerto Rican places with computers are closed. And we didn't know that until just twenty minutes ago so we're going to be hurrying to send off our emails from the chapel. But as you saw last week, we went to el Morro. It was super cool. It's a lot like the castles we visited in Ireland. You'll love seeing it when we come back ;) The coolest part was to be out on the sea shore. It's really so beautiful here. President Alvarado leaving has been a sad experience. I really loved him a lot. He just cried and cried when he gave his farewell talk. He was barely able to say he loved us as he walked out the door. Most of the missionaries were crying. But even though it was sad, I'm really excited to meet President Smartt. He sounds really great--we hear things from outsiders. Some missionaries have family or friends who know him. The work of salvation broadcast was very incredible. I was stoked when I heard the changes in internet policy. Not that Facebook is on my mind, and obviously there will be a lot of rules connected to its use, but it will be a great way to connect with members and their friends. I really see the inspiration behind it. I spend my mornings contacting and I feel like it has hardly any fruit. And in the campo it's hard to contact. The roads are thin, the houses spread out, and there are no spaces to park your car. Blah. So I'm excited. But we're actually going to be changing our area up a little bit, so we won't be in the campo so frequently. Our plan to have the members bring a friend to church is working out incredibly. We had dinner with the first counselor in the bishopric the other night. He told us he has 8 friends already invited and committed to coming to church. They are coming from different places of the island, which is really cool. Maybe just this single activity can have an impact on the whole island. We'll see. I already know of 10 non-members who will attend on the 14th. We're trying to have 5 baptisms that day. Stake policy here in the San Juan stake is that we do baptisms on Sunday, so that would be a really neat addition to the activity. Unfortunately, one of the core families of the ward apostatized this past week. There are a lot of details behind it that I can't talk about. They believe things about the leaders that are not true--to give you just a bit of information, I'll just tell you they believe that there is a sort of "voudou" involved, and that leaders are doing things on purpose to make this family angry. It's really lame. When I visited them they were really receptive to us and told us to continue visiting and asking them to help us with missionary work. But I can't take someone who is against church leaders to a lesson with an investigator. We're praying hard for them. We talked with them pretty strongly, and the stake president's going to visit. Hopefully the Lord will soften their hearts and show them that they're thinking irrationally. I love you all! Thank you so much! Elder Cevering