Blessings Come After the Trial of our Faith

This week was so insanely awesome! I can now share my testimony that i know blessings come after the trial of our faith! We baptized Yolanda, her two twins, and two of her nieces! it was a beautiful experience to see all of them in white!! I led the baptismal service and got to baptize the three boys! This also has opened up some great teaching oportunities with Yolanda's sister and her son as well! Don't worry. I will send all the pictures today! hopefully! oh yeah and we had 15 people in the church! how nuts huh? 14 of the 15 with baptismal dates! i know i was EXTREMELY blessed this week and I know it was because of our persistence in doing the Lord's work. Heavenly Father sure blesses his children!

SO the new people are 3 different families, and then the sister of yolanda and her son. We received a reference form our district leader about one family that had talked to the missionaries and everything before! We went to check it out and when we got there, two families were living in this house and they are all so legit!! The first day they said they wanted to have a family home evening with us (which we are going to have tonight.) They have a few challenges, like in the one family, they are still not married but have three kids, so we are planning on going to marry them on friday!! They are so excited and the 6 kids loved church yesterday. The parents enjoyed it too, but seemed a little bored! The primary program was yesterday and it was kind of a doozy! haha! Nothing like ours, but the spirit works in mysterious ways, because all of them still enjoyed church! gosh i have so much to say and so little time! that is why this email is all over the place.

The other family is a mom and dad with three kids as well. They are a little reserved, but really sweet people who have a desire to change their lives! Well all of them have dates for baptism on the 13th of november, and we are going to work our hardest to help them overcome everything that lies ahead!! But yeah i am freaking púmped out of my mind! if every week of the mission was like this, i would literally jump out of my bed in the mornings! haha.

SO also we had a family home evening with Yolanda and her family about prophets and it went really well! We played the pig snorting game dad, and they all loved it! We had tons of fun! Also, it was really cool to see all of their testimonies grow. Glenda, the niece of Yolanda, bore an awesome testimony to her mom when we were asking for permision to baptize her! Really powerfull stuff here! Oh yeah mom, the packages came and all of the food and candy is already gone! Not only was i pounding it, but i shared it with a lot of people. "American candy" and they all loved it. But there is one request for the son of Yolanda. He wants zours, the candy! They stopped selling them here and he is ticked! haha.

So today we played soccer again and it was so much fun! All of the mexicans are like "who knew that gringos could play soccer?" I think my team lost once, so we were on the court the whole time for about ten games! I had two of the sickest backward header goals for game winners! haha. Not that it is that important, but it was legit! haha. I literally right now am smilling from ear to ear and we are owning!!

That's so awesome that Uncle Lee came over to help C-Bear celebrate his big win! Congrats Christian. You're the best! And Uncle Lee, you rank right up there as one of my hero's too!

Finally, thanks so much to Bishop Willardsen, and everyone in the ward, who is going to be fasting for the missionaries! I sure need all the prayers and help that i can get and it's way cool to think that everyone back home will be dedicating their fast to this great work. It is truly the work of the Lord!! My testimony has grown so much and i know that when we do all we can, and have the right desires in our hearts and minds, the Lord will bless us. They might not come as fast as we want, but they will come!

I love you all
Elder Holmes