Week 55

Hey y'all!! It's been another great week here in beautiful East Texas! And boy is it heating up!! We have had a really hot and really humid summer so far. There has been a TON of rain followed by temperatures in the mid-90's...needless to say I have been sweating a little bit and I'm remembering how miserable I was last summer. It's going by pretty fast though, so the next thing I know I'm going to be freezing again when we hit winter.

Well, first off my new companion's name is Elder Redmond from Magna, Utah. I obviously had no idea where that is and he said it's about 15 minutes southwest of Salt Lake City. He's really cool and into everything from shotguns to computers, from cars to video games. We realized about 10 minutes of being together that we had a lot in common and that we were going to have a lot of fun. He is a really awesome missionary and is really excited to work. I have to admit, I was a little scared I was going to get a greenie that wanted simply to go home and didn't want to do anything, but thankfully I didn't. He is really excited to learn, is scared of contacting, and is still trying to figure things out. Spitting image of me when I was a greenie ;) He is going to be a great missionary, and I can totally see him being a district leader or even training next transfer. He is going to do great.

Well this week was pretty good again. We were able to see just about everyone and I really want to focus on a couple:

Sevren is doing awesome and we have a firm date for him to be baptized! He will be getting baptized on July 29th, and we are really excited for him. His dad is going to baptize him and it will be sweet.

Charles is doing pretty good; he hasn't smoked since Wednesday and says he's done. He told us he's pretty stubborn and if he wants to do something he'll do it once he's committed to it. He wasn't at church this week, but he should be there next week and we should see him baptized soon.

We had a really good lesson with Carlton last week. We read part of Joseph Smith--History with him and he really felt the Spirit and is starting to get it. He is one that will take a while but I think that he could get baptized if we keep working with him. He was at church yesterday and really enjoyed it and will hopefully keep coming.

A few weeks ago Elder Hill tracted onto a woman named Christina in Jacksonville on an exchange and she told us we could come back, and we have been meeting with her for about three weeks now. She is really awesome and will hopefully start coming to church soon. She is Hispanic but speaks really good English; however, her husband does not speak a lot of English so it's pretty difficult, but we have a family from Mexico that lives in Jacksonville and attends the Bullard ward, and they are fellow shipping them and so hopefully we can get the Spanish Elders involved and see a baptism in a couple months!!

Other than that, the week was normal. We taught, tracted, laughed, nearly cried, sweat, ate, slept, and studied. It was a good week and we had a lot of success.

I love y'all and hope y'all have a great week!!!

Love,
Elder Grondel