7-19

Dear Everyone,

I feel so happy today. I found out that several weeks ago Tina Rojas up in Texarkana was baptized! She had finally set her own date like we challenged her to and Elder Davis was able to perform the baptism. I also found out that a young black family of 6 named the Bells that Elder Davis and I had begun teaching up in Texarkana (I don't know if I ever wrote home about them) just recently got baptized. I'm not going to lie, when I started reading that in the letter I got from President I started to cry a little bit. The Lord takes care of us so much. Elder Killian and I spent a lot of tracting this week so we could find some English investigators for us to teach. Elder Smith and I had kind of been focusing on finding new Spanish and so most of our investigators right now are Spanish speaking. However, we found a fair amount of people this week that gave us a return appointment so hopefully we'll get some English lessons going for Elder Killian and myself to teach. We've started teaching several Spanish people how to start speaking English and we're hoping that that will lead into teaching the Gospel lessons as well. One Spanish couple that we've taught 6 or 7 times different English skills have accepted our invitation to hear the Gospel so hopefully we'll be teaching them that sometime this week. Well, even though it's P-day, Maria invited us over today for lunch and to have a lesson so I have to cut the letter short. Hope you're all doing well and I look forward to hearing from you next week.

Love,

Elder Bradley Bishop

P.S. Just thought I'd let you know that there's a Brad Bishop here in our ward boundaries that's less-active and that we plan on going to see sometime this week. I'll let you know how that goes. :)

7-5

Dear Everyone,

Another great week in the work! It always kinda throws me when I write on Wednesday and then again the following Monday. I feel like I'm writing again too soon or something since I don't have a full weeks worth to report.

We had 4 investigators in church yesterday. Maria and the Lords came, as did a 19-year-old girl named Maritza. Maritza's mom and dad are both Spanish, but none of their kids speak Spanish. Missionaries have been going over there for about 6 months now, but so far we haven't been able to really get them to see the impact the gospel could have on their lives. Some of them have been to church in the past, but this was the first time for any of them in over a month. I was pretty tired after church yesterday. One of the Spanish families that were in the ward moved a couple weeks ago to Washington and so we lost the member who did the translating for us in sacrament meeting. Their father also moved with them and he was the one that taught the Spanish Gospel Principles class during Sunday School. There isn't a replacement for the translating and the ward hasn't called anybody new yet to teach the Gospel Principles class so on Sunday I did both. Speaking Spanish for the better part of two hours definitely dried my mouth out. What a great way to start out fast Sunday! :) My throat was pretty scratchy for the rest of the day until we broke our fast, but I was alright though.

To answer your question, Mom, yes we usually get fed by members a lot down here. The average is probably about 5 times a week. This last week we didn't have any though because no one was able to sign up at all because of stake conference last Sunday. It was alright though.

We did have Maria over for a dinner with the couple who speak English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The dinner went well and afterwards we watched the Restoration movie with Maria since she doesn't have a DVD player. She liked it, but we didn't really get the response we were looking for when we challenged her again to be baptized. She said she liked us coming over and teaching her and loved coming to church, but that she'd already been baptized twice and didn't feel like she was ready to be baptized a third time yet. So, we realized we needed to go over having the proper authority to baptize with her again for our next lesson and as it turns out, that's what the lesson was on in Sunday School yesterday so it worked out pretty well. We're going to go visit her on Thursday so hopefully she'll have given it some more thought and the Lord can soften her heart. Sister Lord has been having some pain in her legs lately so if you could keep her in your prayers, I'd appreciate it and I know she would too. It's made it difficult for her to come to some of the activities we've had the past week though she was at least able to make it to church yesterday.

Some quick questions I've had for a long time and I need to ask now before I forget: What mission did you serve in Mom? Were we in San Miguel de Allende when we were in Guanajuato? Those are actually the only two I remember right now. Love you all though and look forward to hearing from you.

Elder Bradley Bishop

P.S. Actually, one last question. That braided thing you sent me from Peru...you said it was supposed to be a keychain, but is it a keychain or a bracelet?