Dusty's Email -- 2/8/2010

Hey,

This last week was a wet one. It rained a lot, for a long time. Luckily my area didn’t flood. I don’t know why, but the sewer canals that go through Neza, in our area it’s a river, but it didn’t overflow. So all is well. But in the area of the Zone Leaders, they are in Neza, the water got up to their hips! So they were out of their areas for a couple of days, while they got everything cleaned up. But it’s all pretty much back to normal, and hasn’t rained. It has just been hot lately. The Zone Leaders say that their area smells like a sewer. They say that it stinks really bad. Thank goodness I’m here, and not there.

The Zone Conference went fine, but President and his wife had to take a different longer route to the stake center. But the conference went good. There was something that really impressed me, when President showed up and during my interview, he kept saying, in Spanish of course, “Elder Howard, my good friend”. He referred to me as his good friend a couple of times. It impressed me because he really only refers to a couple missionaries as his “good friends” and I remember that’s how he talks to Alpuche and Fillerup, some of his more trusted missionaries that have served with him.

It just hit me because I have served by his side for a while, and he had never said that. But then the other day he started saying it. He shared a scripture in the Zone Conference from the Doctrine and Covenants, where the Lord refers to a couple of his servants as His “friends” and said that one day he hoped to be called friend by the Lord. He then gave us another scripture from the same book, that explained what we need to do to be the Lord’s friend. He said that it’s a great trust that the Lord has in those that He calls friend....and so is it with him too. It gave me a smile to hear that from him.
On Sunday we baptized an investigator that has had 10 years attending church with his wife and children. The wife had always dreamed of seeing him in baptismal clothes, and yesterday was the day. During the last hymn, “Families can be together forever”, the whole family, and ward were in tears. It’s a baptism that everyone has been waiting for a long, long time. I truly felt the joy that comes from missionary work yesterday.

I gotta run , all is well. Thanks for keeping me updated on everything, and have fun with Toddly this week.

Elder Howard