May 31, 2010 600+ inactives OH MY!

Hola mi familia!

How it going up there in the wonderful warm weather of Utah? We are doing well here in Palmira and are starting to see some success. We have been working a lot with Alberto Mendez this week and have seen him quite a few times in the streets. He is progressing quite nice, but we ran into a little snag with his progression. He won`t be able to get baptized for quite a while. But egual we`ll keep working with him and he lp keeping him progressing along the road to baptism and get him started in the road to Eternal Life.

We are going to have something very special happen tomorrow that I want to be prepared for. We are going to have a member of the 70 come and speak to us. We have Zone Conference with Elder Zivic of the 70. It`s going to be a fun experience and I`m excited for what I am going to learn. This week was a week of miracles. Elder Scoville and I keep working hard and keep finding incredible people to teach that want to change their lives.

We`re working hard with the ward to have some activities and bring the less actives back to church. We had a meeting with the ward activites leader last night (he was the bishop before, so he knows a lot about the ward and it`s functions) and we plan on having an activity (as they say here) this Saturday, no, but the next Saturday. It`s always funny how they give addresses here, I love it. “You know the big house with the nice gates, plants and big palm tree out in front? It`s not the house, but the next house.” Very descriptive, it`s quite nice. You definitely know the house when you see it, or at least you know what house it isn`t. It`s funny, I love it!

Anyway, we were going to have the ward activity on the Saturday that I just mentioned, but the problem is that there is a very big game that day...Argentina plays their first game in the world cup I expect the world to stop that day and watch the game so we`ll see what happens. We`re going to do it another day for sure. We went to San Martin (the neighboring city) the other day basically to walk around and find out that we could have the bill for our gas in the bank right next to our house. But we got to talk to a lot of people and found one guy interested in the gospel that lives in our area; that was definitely a blessing!

The blessings are coming and I am working hard and loving every second of it. It`s hard, but I`ve never had so many blessings before in my life. Yesterday in a Stake Conference I got to see a ton of people from my first area. It was so touching and I will write more about that as well.

To share a quick message about what`s going on, the weeks pass really fast. There`s lots to do and I am really happy! I was just about to send photos today when the battery on my camera died. Next week will have to do. Keep working hard everyone! Love you all! Bye!

Love, Elder Hoglund