April Showers!

Familia!

We were blessed with some PRIME weather this past week. It was overcast and kind of cool all week and then it finally rained onSaturday. That was the end of the good weather though, now it's back to summer weather again haha. Sure was nice while it lasted though!

Finally got that plaque finished huh? Thanks for doing that! Just in time for the halfway mark! Hahaha, I remember it taking quite a while to get Luke's up there too. Good stuff though!

We had a good week this week out here in Carson. We had district meeting Friday and set a goal for baptismal dates we were going to set as a district. We prayed as companionships and then got together and discussed what we felt the Lord would help us achieve. The goal the my companion and I had was 3. Our two investigators with baptismal dates moved out of our area, so we didn't have any at the time. We went out after district meeting and were blessed to set two more! One with Norma Ramos and another with Jonathan Valdez. Both real nice people we are hoping will be able to work toward that goal! We also had an investigator named Liliana show up to church for the third hour and she stayed for a baptism afterward! It was awesome! My companion and I had to teach the Gospel Principles class and it went surprisingly well. I never feel extremely confident about my ability to speak, but I somehow make it through! Haha

One of the counselors in the bishopric grabbed me after church and gave me the assignment to speak on Mother's Day about the influence my mother had on my decision to serve a mission and how she continues to influence me. I told him that there'd be tears and Spanglish if he gave me that topic! Haha I'm looking forward to being able to tell the ward about what a great mother I have though. I can't believe that I'll be calling again in a couple weeks! It feels like I just did that! I remember Tyler Cluff emailing me right after Christmas and telling me to get ready for how fast the time between Christmas and Mother's Day goes. He was right!

A man in church yesterday related a story of a man named Robert Thomas who was found by missionaries in the Dominican Republic. He said that the missionaries knew immediately that he wasn't a native of the island, so they began to talk to him. He listened to the missionaries and eventually gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the Restored Gospel. Apparently, he was in the Army and had been stationed in Germany when he stole a lot of money from the US government and fled to the DR. He knew that in order to fully repent and be baptized, he needed to turn himself in and pay for the consequences of the things he'd done. So he did! He was taken back to Germany to be judged. He was given a sentence of 25 years in prison. After lots of letters from missionaries and the mission president (who is now our ward mission leader), the sentence was dropped to 15 years, then 7, then 2, then 17 months. This man was willing to serve 25 years in prison in order to be baptized into Christ's restored church! Do we each have the of Robert Thomas to stand for what we know to be true? I hope we all do! I love you all!

Elder Reynolds