Dear Family

I am doing Great this monday morning!  Nice and cool!  I´m loving the shorts and hoody combo!!!  The girls out on the street think I´m crazy but my legs just don´t get that cold and I don´t like pants so...

I hope you have NOT discarded pictures that I´ve sent home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I transferred a bunch of pictures to an 8gb flash drive that I have and I can´t find those pictures anymore!   So keep those pictures safe there at home!  I´m going to try a few things to recover things but I made it kind of hard when I formatted the flash drive those things came from! 

From my letter to him:

The other speaker today was a returned missionary. He said some things that I wrote down to share with you. He said that when he first arrived in the mission field, he thought, "1 hour of scripture study ~ very day!?! How will I EVER fill a whole hour with scripture study?!?" By the end, it was, "Only an hour?!? How can I EVER finish my studies in only an hour?!?" He also said that there was night and day difference between when he was obedient to the convenient, and when he became obedient to "even the ridiculous rules." He said one of the most ridiculous was the rule of backing a car; while one is driving, the other is out, behind him, backing him up. That is particularly ridiculous, when the only thing you might hit is a mud puddle, because you are in the middle of nowhere and it is raining and muddy. But, again, he said night and day difference.

He told of a 14 year old girl that they met. She had attended mutual for about a month when they met her. They invited her to come to church, and she did show up that week. It was fast Sunday, and Elder P was surprised to see her up on the stand. She said that she knew this was the true church, that she knew she needed to do whatever she could to become a member of it. They talked with her afterwards and asked what she knew about Joseph Smith. They received the absolute most blank stare ever! Same when they asked about the Book of Mormon. They asked if they could meet with her and teach her about the restored gospel. She was baptized 3 weeks later ~ with an understanding of the gospel to accompany her witness that it was the right place to be.

There is a huge diference in when we are trying to follow all the rules and when we are not!  There are some rules that the President can and does change but there are some that we just have to suck it up and get it done!  There are always blessings that come from it!

That´s an amazing story about that girl!  I wish that would happen here but I guess it takes members that invite friends to a mutual activity that they don´t even have!   We are going to have the Unity Day soon!  hopefully we can get things together quick enough to have it in two weekends... before it gets tooooo cold!  I got the ideas and letters from Aunt Monica.  We found the ones that will work here and organized something!  Now we just have to get our leaders into a meeting together and we can go to town with it.

L is... going!  She is way cool and I still think that she will get baptised but I see it taking a little while because she always ends up taking care of a kid when she has a cita with us.  We´re working hard with her though!

Sounds like everything is doing great there!  I will pray for Sasha to comprehend the things she is hearing!  I´m glad they could get you the cheese on the siiiiide!!!  I think they spent more on the packaging than on the actual cheese! hahaha

We are really doing great and having a blast here!  I have changed and finally been able to focus on the mission and not care about what´s going on!

I love you all and I Look forward to your letters next week!... and a package?

Elder Heywood