Last letter from California???

Dear Family!

 

     This week was really awesome. Lot's of really cool stuff happened. Every night we had dinner with a member. I'm so grateful for that. Some of them cook really weird stuff, and others its really delicious. But they are all so nice and so willing to help us out.

 

We found 3 new investigators this week! My second day here in Santa Ana I made a contact all by myself. Her name was Juana. She gave me her address and all that info. At the beginning of last week ( Tuesday I think) we went to go visit her. Well we got there and asked for Juana, the man had never heard of Juana. My companions just started laughing because I had been so excited to teach my first contact. Sweet little Juana had given me a false address. But, at the door we met Fernando. We are currently teaching him. He has lots of questions about the church. Also we have started teaching a family. They are hard to explain... None of them have the same last name. The mom and dad aren't married. And there are 5 random kids that come from the mom that live with them. This is a big problem here. But they are really awesome. They have a 17 year old girl and a 13 year old girl. They are both really interested in the Book of Mormon. Every time we go back they just have tons of questions. We are teaching them the restoration tonight. I'm really excited! And we are teaching a man named Art. I don"t think its exactly going anywhere... I think he just likes to hang out. So I think we're dropping him. 

 

On Friday I got a call from the office saying that my Visa is almost done. They had me and Elder Anderson sign some papers. The Sister from the office said that she sent them on Friday and on Monday ( today ) Salt Lake will get them. I think then Salt Lake has to send me the visa. I'm not exactly sure how that works. So I think I'll be leaving this week! I was sad because I wanted to see Jose get baptized. But I got really lucky. Yesterday we were scheduled to have Ramiro get baptized. He is an awesome guy. His wife got baptized about 6 months ago. We are really excited for him. It was also fast Sunday yesterday. I had the thought to fast for Jose and his mom Maria. So I did. Jose came to church for like the 3rd time in a row. His mom hasn't come in a while. But the ward mission leader decided that Jose might as well get baptized today if he is ready. So they interviewed him, and he passed of course. Everyone was so happy. He has been trying to get baptized for 7 months. And yesterday I had the opportunity to baptize him! It was so awesome. I was pretty nervous going into it. But everything went well. I even said his name right. Jose Isabel Toro Garcia. Why do all Mexicans have 4 names? I know that the Spirit helped me. It was such a great experience for me. Now you can start looking at the pictures. So the first picture is of Elder Smith, Jose, Elder Arevalo, and me. Isn't he just awesome?! The next one is of us 3 and the man Elder Smith baptized, Ramiro. The 3rd is of all of us together. Man I didn't know that setting up baptisms took so much time. We had to print the programs, set up chairs, fill the font, it took some time. Since it was Elder Smiths 1 year mark one of the families he got to know really well while serving in an English speaking ward brought us Cafe Rio. They took this picture of us. They are really nice.

 

Have a great week everyone! I love you all so much. I'm so grateful to be a missionary!

 

Love Riley

 

Here are the pictures Riley sent this week.