Wow! What a Week!

Here is Scott's letter for the week.  When he is talking about going to a meal with "Lino's dad" -- Lino is a good friend of ours here who was our family's home teacher for several years, before he was called into our Bishopric.  His dad was so nice to take Scott and his companion out this past week. You'll be able to read how much it meant to Scott. Hope you all enjoy a very merry Christmas!       With love.....Carolann

Hi everyone!

Well I think that you are going to be pretty shocked this week with a couple of the announcements that I have for you guys because last week I really didn't tell you guys too much about our teaching pool. First of all, I will be staying here in Queretaro with Elder Hoopes and I will end up killing him (being his comp as he finishes his mission) because this is his last change in the mission. I have never killed an elder before so that is going to be pretty exciting. Second of all, this week Lino`s dad took us out to eat this week!! I had forgotten that he was an ex seventy and ex mission president. What an awesome experience it was being able to talk to him and his wife! (I will also attach the fotos that we took with them when we went out to eat!) My comp was a little bit surprised when we first saw them because Brother Alvarez was all dressed up in a suit and tie, and his wife was in a nice dress. We touched on that topic later, and he commented on how special our calling is, and he would never disrespect our calling by dressing just in normal clothes!  I thought that was kind of cool. He went on to tell us a bunch of fun stories like when they went out to eat with some of the apostles or the meetings they used to have when he was a seventy of the church. At this moment, my comp and I were both feeling pretty special because he had taken us out to eat!!  We had a little change of plans and went to eat breakfast instead of dinner, so we went to the Ihop here!  Then after that they took us to a bread shop to buy all the bread we wanted! Wow what awesome people. Brother Alvarez reminded me a lot of Lino and what a nice man he is! He set for me a great example on how home teaching should be done. I am just realizing that i forgot Hno alvarez`s email address to send him the pictures so please tell lino to forward them to his dad! It was super nice of them to spend their morning with us!

SO Now on to the other part of the week! We had 3 baptisms this week!  I know that you are probably wondering where they all came from, and you are probably as surprised as I was on Sunday when Adrian and Koskanny (2 young single adults that were going to get baptized last week) came to church on Sunday and told us that they wanted to get baptized that same day! Wow! The good thing was that they had already had all of the lessons, and so we just rushed the district leader over to our church to do the interviews, and then into the water they went! It was amazing and so special.  They had a ton of their member friends there and there was a wonderful spirit.  The other baptism was for Iris and we had her baptismal service on Tuesday! Her Uncle was scheduled to come home from his mission on Tuesday, and she wanted to be his last baptism as a missionary. SO we rushed over to the church and when the returned missionary got to the church, Iris surprised him by asking him to baptize her! It was a really special occasion and both of them shed plenty of tears. After the baptism, he went to talk to the stake president and got released. At the Sunday baptismal service, the bishop baptized Koskanny and Adrian`s best friend, who has been a member for about one year baptized him. That is what the coolest part about working with the members is. They do all the work, and they are the ones that are so involved in the conversion of their friends and family! It is really amazing to see! i will send you some really fun pictures today of all of them! I love the work, and i love when the work is done with the help of the members. It really is a much stronger conversion for everyone! 

This next week is going to be a super busy one. Tomorrow we set up a service project for the whole zone. Thursday is the ward Christmas program/talent show, And Saturday is our Christmas party with president! Should be some fun stuff! Tonight we are going to do our act of service for a family in the ward and I will tell  you all about it next week and send you the pics! The work is awesome!

I love you all lots,
Elder Holmes