Another busy week

Dear family,

All right it's been a busy busy week this week, but I'll try to fill ya in as much as I can, okay?

So Monday we had a total blast for P-day. After we got done emailing, we did our shopping, and then headed over to the church to play some sports with a few less actives and a potential investigator... it was sweet! We played soccer in the gym and got totally smoked haha. I'm pretty sure that white people shouldn't be allowed to play soccer, because we just plain suck at it by comparison. After that humbling experience, we ate dinner, then had another family home evening with the Pisters. This time, however, we were prepared and made sure we knew what was going on beforehand. We invited over the Perez and another recent convert, and started family history profiles for them so that they could do baptisms for them on the following Friday. It was smooth sailing-ish until I tried to create an account for sister Perez, and she gave me a faulty email address that we couldn't open haha. Because of that little point, we had to call church headquarters and talk to them and explain that we'd accidentally put in the wrong email account and long story short after about an hour of talking to them and trying to figure it out, we got it fixed up how we wanted it hahaha. Oh man the Pisters gave me so much crap for it because I was getting a little stressed out... I notice that I do that more now... maybe it helps me be a more responsible person now though haha. Okay, so that was about the excitement for Monday.

Now here's the update on the people we're teaching right now:

We have Adan (no, not Adam) Gutierrez and his girlfriend Rab (sp?), Laura Gutierrez (not related to Junior), Teresa Madonado, Laticia Rivera (not related to my son), Iyali Cruz, and Felipe Vazquez. Now, aside from them we also have the recent converts/less actives that we are getting on "temple track". Their names are the Perez family, the Mendoza family, Elisa Zirangua, The Cruz family, and one more family whose name escapes me right now. Throw on top of that a mountain of new investigators, and that's about where we stand haha.

With Adan and Rab things are going really well. He reminds me a lot of Josh, but with a lot of kids haha. His sister is Lupe G, and she makes fun of him by calling him "el conejo" or "bunny rabbit" in english because... well... he's got a lot of kids haha :-P. Anyways, he is a super sweet guy and is making a lot of changes. When I first got here to Woodburn, the missionaries had started teaching him, but he was having problems with drinking and smoking as well as the law of chastity (go figure right?), so we dropped him while I was with Rangel. However, recently, he has been showing a lot of interest, especially because he and Rab want to get married and start going to church. We talked to them the other day about the doctrine of Christ as well as taught them a little more in-depth about forgiveness/repentance... it went really well, and they came to church! It was awesome! They really got into it and even sang the hymns and read scriptures.

Then there's Laura. She's a referral from the english elders who started teaching her, but she speaks a little more Spanish than English, so they gave her to us. Right now, she has a lot of questions about why there is so much suffering in the world, so we taught her about there being an opposition in all things, as well as trying to pull her nose out of the here and now and get her to look at the big picture... she also came to church, although she accidentally went to the english ward haha.

We finally got back in contact with Iyali who has to wait for a while to get baptized, and it went really well! she is reading her scriptures and we are just making sure she stays "active" (although she's not a member) until she can get baptized.

Felipe is going to be getting baptized on the 29th and everything is going well for him... nothing to report on him haha. The same with Juan Velazquez who will get baptized on the 19th of September.

Who else who else... Oh! We had an interesting chat with Laticia Rivera this week where she found out that we believe that Jesus Christ is Jehova. She kinda flipped a little bit and said "show me where it says that in the bible." I told her I wasn't going to do it, so what i did is left her a post-it with about five scriptures that correlate with christ from old to new testaments, and then I told her to pray about it. I don't know if she did on friday, but she came to the branch activity on saturday, so we'll see what happens this week when we pass by.

Oh! Branch activity! It was the sweetest thing ever! We went to a place called Scotts Mills and had a total blast! There is a park right by a little river that runs through some rock that looks like the same kind of rock you would find in Maupin or at lake Billy Chinook... man it was a sweet place and i was super jealous they all got to go cliff jump from about 20 or so feet into a big pool below a little cascade. It's okay though because there was a ton of food, three-way tug of war, and I ended up starting a brutal waterfight with water balloons... oh man Pres. Pister totally trucked me haha. I ran out of ammo and he chased me down and in spite of my best high-stepping efforts, he planted a water balloon directly on my left butt-cheek and then another one right on my shirt below my arm haha.

Other than that excitement this week, we had fourteen non-members in sacrament meeting. Booyeah. I have nothing more to say about that haha.

Oh one thing though that I do want haha well, two things. Everybody wants to see a picture of us as a family, so could I get a picture of us pretty please? :-) Also, I realized I don't have my line of authority out here... I need something to show to all the pastors I bash haha just kidding I don't bash.. :-)

Well I'm super jealous you went to Fish Lake without me... again... but it's good to hear you guys are all having a blast down there. Tell Katie Jo I'm a slacker, but I'll have a letter for her in the mail soon, and that I hope she gets pumped about starting her last year of high school... it's a blast!

I love you guys,

-Elder Kurt Mooney