Another Beautiful Experience!

Hola everyone! So i am pretty pumped up right now!! We had our baptisms yesterday of Mario, Lourdes and their 2 kids! It was another beautiful experience and i will attach pictures again on that! Everyone in the other family (of Jazmin and Antonio) came to church, as well, so they, along with Ruth and her two kids, will be getting baptized this next sunday! When we had the baptism of mario and lourdes, the others were all like "why cant we be baptized right now!" haha. They are all really excited, it seems, for their baptism this next week! We need to work extremely hard so everything will go well. So, as you can tell, right now our area is booming! We are experiencing so much success and it is awesome. It is completely amazing to see the people who have been so prepared by our Father in Heaven!

Ok so yeah, Elder Castillo left this morning at around 8 in the morning, and my new comp is named Elder Ostergard. He is a gringo from Heber, Utah. He really looks a lot like me! Blonde hair, blue eyes and tall. He has been in the mish for 16 months. Our investigators are going to freak because we look so much a like! haha. He seems nice, but i am not sure how great his spanish is. He sounds pretty white! haha. But we haven't taught anyone yet so we will see when it comes to that time, i guess! It was hard to say bye to Castillo! I grew to really love the guy! Towards the end, we were having a ton of fun together and with our investigators. We were always happy and joking around with jazmin, antonio, ruth and their families. The only bummer is that all of them are always like "Holmes, you are baptizing me. I want you to baptize me!" haha. I hope my companion can show them his love, as well. So next week when i send the photo, there will be 9 people dressed in white! how beautiful will that be!! My new comp has a lot to live up to! Everyone really loved castillo and we really brought energy into the lives of the people here. The families of jazmin, antonio y ruth told our bishop when we had a lesson all together that our visits are the best part of their day. Their kids all just wait at the window, looking for us to come. I am loving it here! I have learned to be myself even with my spanish that isn’t that great. I was so glad that i didn’t leave. You don't even know the kind of happiness that i am experiencing! Well i guess maybe you do, if you also served a mission! haha.

So this week the highlight was definitely the baptism, and then we had our missionary rally on saturday, which i will also send pics of! Elder castillo and i did an activity that was based on the atonement. We bought donuts for everyone and then we would offer them to the people in the room. If they took the donut, Elder castillo or i would have to do a bunch of exercises. The more people that took the donuts, the more exercise we would do! We then related this to Christ and how he has paid for all of our sins, but when we do the wrong things, we add to that suffering. It was a powerful message and everyone really liked it. It is hard to explain but just trust me. It was sweet. We also had four other stations and we had a ton of our investigators there. Then we all ate chimichangas! Hermana Meza, the Relief Society Pres, makes the best chimis ever! She always makes them for me because she knows how amazing I think they are!!!

We also got some new investigators out of the activity. If you can't tell, I am doing just awesome and the spanish is coming along! I am at least at the point where i have the people dying laughing! I don’t know if it is because of my gringo accent or what! haha. I am happy! I love you all! The gospel of Jesus Christ changes lives! I have seen it in the lives of the people i have taught, and also in my own!!! Well, peace!!

Love you all,

Elder holmes