Higher Up! Farther In!

Hello everybody! It's been another great week here in the Vista. I'm slightly in mourning, because of the Lakers' victory, but other than that I'm in good spirits.

This morning we climbed either an extremely large hill or a very short mountain. It's right next to our house and you can get a view of the whole valley from it. I'm attaching some pictures.

We also went to a funeral this morning for a man named Arthur Mountjoy. I never knew him except for a couple of blessings we gave him when he was about to die but from the funeral it seemed like he was a very very good man.

Monsoons are starting (YES!). I love monsoons, they're probably my favorite thing about Arizona. They aren't in full swing yet but we've had a couple of monsoon-like rains. A couple of nights ago we got a storm that came through at about 3AM. Some lightning hit right next to the house and it was LOUD! I'm talking my ears were ringing for hours afterwards loud.

Thanks to Brig for the oplatkys (spelling?). They were amazing. Not quite as good as getting them hot off the stove in the CR but still quite amazing. I appreciate you thinking about me. They reminded me of when were going to leave the Czech Republic and Petr and Barbara sent their kids to buy us some of those as a gift right before we left. Good people, good memories.

Our branch president called me on Saturday and told me that I'm going to be speaking on Sunday (Fathers day). It's only my second time giving a talk in Spanish, and my Spanish has gone down hill a little bit since I've been here struggling to find Hispanics to teach, so pray for me that it will go well.

We had interviews on Thursday. President Walker is the best. He's so inspired. It's amazing to see someone sooth all of your fears, answer all of your questions, and put all of your doubts to rest, without ever voicing those fears, questions or doubts. That interview definitely gave me the boost that I'm going to need to make it through the rest of the transfer.

We have a new branch mission leader, a guy who returned from a mission in Spain just a couple of weeks ago, and he's awesome! His name is Trent. He invited five Hispanics that he met at work to come to church last week. Totally still got the missionary fire. A story to illustrate:

We were knocking doors, having trouble finding Hispanics. So I decided that instead of just knocking doors hoping to find some spanish-speakers, I would use my keen Hispanic-finding skills to pick out a house. So we drive for a minute and I pick the house, we go up and knock the door and it's actually a black young man. We begin to talk to him and he says "Yeah I was in your church just a few days ago to play basketball, my friend Trent invited me." Well we continue talking to him and find out that he's actually just living at that house for a few days with his friend Enrique. (My Hispanosense was right!) We call Trent to see if he knows who Enrique is and he says "Yeah, I talked to him this morning and invited him to church." So we're definitely excited to have him in the branch.

So the work continues to move along here in the middle of nowhere. Thank you for all of your love, letters, and support. Transfers are a week from Wednesday but it's almost a lock that I'll stay here for my last six weeks.

I love you all. The gospel is true!

Love,