Greetings from "The Captain"

Hi everyone.  

Hope this e-mail finds you all just livin' the dream there!  Mom, so glad to hear that your surgery went well.  Hermana Call actually sent word to me on Thursday night that all had gone well with the surgery and that you were doing fine.  She sure has been nice to me!

As you guys probably already guessed, this week was also an extremely busy week for us. Like every single week that i have had since I have been here in the offices. This week President wanted us to visit a couple of different companionships and work with a couple of different elders, but most of them were way far away! On Wednesday we went to some district meetings in Atotonilco and than we traveled about an hour and a half in bus to go and do divisions with the zone leaders in Valle de Mezquital (Hidalgo). We were up there with them the whole day working in their area, which was a good experience for us. One of my good friends from the mission, Elder Dove, is there. It was good to see him and work with him for the day.  We slept in their house (which is always my least favorite part -  sleeping in the houses of the other missionaries!  It is only my least favorite part because the elders never have any extra sheets, blankets, pillows, etc!  The night that we were up there I slept on some nasty matress with a super nasty blanket. You know those blankets that smell SUPER good and feel like silk? Yeah not those! haha. SO usually i don't get much sleep when I'm travelling, so that kind of plays in to my being tired sometimes. 

And then on Friday (yesterday) we went up to Queretaro to study with some of the elders up there. It is always fun to go back to Queretaro! It is so pretty up there, and I just love it. It was sad to see Elder Hurst leave last week, but they are just killing it up there in my old ward! It kind of makes me jealous!  Anyway, here are a few answers to some of your questions.

SO today is the baptism of the Hermana Maria and a little kid that is 8 years old from the ward! But the problem is that THERE IS NO WATER IN THE CAPILLA!  Unreal. We should have a water truck coming to fill up the pila here in a little but I hope it gets here. If not, we have our plan de respaldo in a different church building that is close by. So we will see what happens, but she is super pumped up for her baptism!

• How is the rest of your teaching pool?
• The teaching pool is struggling a lot right now in our area. We haven't been finding any one lately, and the ward has been tough to get references from. We are working hard on it though, and I hope to see some miracle here in the next couple weeks! 

• Are you getting much time during the week to work your area?  
• We dont get too much time to work in our area! This last week we worked all day Tuesday and a little bit on Thursday night. This next week we should get a little bit more time in our area, but we also have a bunch of missionaries arriving, which means more training sessions. We have about 9 new ones that we are going to train this next Tuesday.

• Does Elder Cruz speak any English?
• No not really, but we are working on it! The other day he gave his testimony to the new gringo elders that got here. He is getting better! 

What a great conference it was last weekend! It was so inspiring, and I was able to receive some great revelation for me, the mission, my area, and the investigators we have right now. The power that is felt when the general authorities speak is a testimony to me of the truthfulness of this church. The spirit that I felt as Elder Holland bore testimony literally shook my body! They are prophets and apostles of our Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Love you all,
Elder Holmes