January 3rd, 2011

Hey everybody,

Well transfers were only 5 weeks this time but it looks like Elder Mercado and Elder Nielsen and I are staying together for another one. This will be pretty exciting staying together especially with Elder Mercado's expertise with the Filipino community.

This week was pretty awesome! We met with the San Juan family and taught them the 2nd half of the plan of salvation. We asked them where they wanted to be at the end of this life and they all said the celestial kingdom. We then invited them to be baptized on January 8th and they said they would call us on Thursday. Before we ended we asked them why they wanted to be baptized and they each gave a different reason: to be born again, to come closer as a family, to have a peace of mind, to find out what their religion is and also because it's a commandment. We then asked what their concerns were and they just said they want to be sure that this is something they want to do. We then invited Florentino to offer the closing prayer and to ask Heavenly Father if this is something they want to do. He gave the prayer and the Spirit was way strong. We also reminded them that after the prayer, to listen to the answers that Heavenly Father is giving them. After doing that, we waited until Thursday.

After fasting and going through some physical struggles (Elder Nielsen got frostnip), we finally got the phone call we were waiting for! Florentino and his family want to be baptized together on the same day!!! The only thing is that they want to decide on a day tomorrow when we met again. Our prayers, your prayers and definitely their prayers were heard and answered. So tomorrow, we will set a date and continue to teach them.

We haven't been able to get a hold of Chris for these past 2 weeks. His job has changed and his phone doesn't work anymore. We're also figuring he's probably getting some outside pressure at the moment. Prayers for him to fight against Satan and to recognize the feelings of the Spirit he had with meeting with us will definitely help.

This is so awesome to be able to see the San Juan family's prayer answered and I am so excited to continue to work with them and see them progress and watch their faith increase along the way.

Love,

Elder Madsen