Dec 12 2011

This week was a good week! Tuesday we were finally able to have the marriage of the family we were going to baptize and then we had the baptism on Saturday! The wedding was sweet ha they both started crying, we were all surprised that the husband started crying too, and they were both super happy! It was awesome! And then on Saturday we were finally able to have our baptism which went awesome! They were so happy and everyone in the ward made an effort to congratulate them and get to know them. They already knew allot of people in the ward so I’m sure they´re gonna do great at staying active!

We have changes this Tuesday or Wednesday, we´re not quite sure because we heard both so I guess we´ll see when they are haha. We´re pretty sure that Elder Mahina and Elder Betanco will both be leaving which means that it´s just gonna be me and my new comp. it should be pretty good though! So because of changes we spent allot of time saying good bye, well Betanco did anyways haha. I´m kind of nervous to see who my next comp will be though ha but that alright it´s all just part of the mission!

On Thursday it was mother’s day here which meant that Thursday night pretty much everyone and there dog was partying haha. Mother´s day is a huge deal here though ha that or the people just look for holidays so they can party; I’m not quite sure which one haha. Something cool happened that night though, we were walking down the road and this kid came running up behind us yelling for us. At first we were like what´s going on? But when he got to us he was like hey when can I be baptized? Neither of us had seen this boy before, and we were on our way to another appointment but we set up a time to go back and visit him and talk with him. We think that he was taught by the missionaries that were here a couple changes ago but they had emergency changes and then most of the investigators were lost because the record book wasn´t filled out. But hopefully we´ll be able to progress with him!

That´s crazy that Elder Beard and Elder Wing are already back! Ha it seems like they just barely left! But I’m sure they were both awesome missionaries!

Well I think that´s about all for this week, Sorry it´s a short one

Thank you all for everything though!

Elder Westwood

5 Dec 2011

This week was a pretty good week in the life of a missionary haha. We taught some cool lessons, had some sweet spiritual experiences, and worked to bring people to the truth!

This week our companionship turned into a trio. Elder Mahina´s comp was a mini-missionary so he was only with him for like a month, so when he left Mahina just joined Elder Betanco and me. It´s been pretty sweet having him with us, he´s an awesome missionary! But since he came with us we´re gonna be working in his area now as well so our area to work just got HUGE!! And then next change they aren´t gonna put more missionaries in his area so that´ll become part of my area. Ha it´s gonna be pretty interesting working in both areas.

We got to go to the First Presidency´s Christmas Devotional last night, that was pretty awesome! Ha except it was in Spanish and they didn´t have another room set apart for English this time. But it was alright, I still understood quite a bit of it so that was cool! Ha I always love listening to the talks given by the General Authorities of the church!

This week I still wasn´t feeling very good and I had the option to go and buy these pills that cost like $5.00 a pill or ask for a blessing. I decided to ask for the blessing, I should have done that when I first got sick during the beginning of this change! I´m not 100% yet but I feel way better and I’m actually recovering faster than Elder Mahina did and he took the pills. I love the power of the priesthood! It´s such a blessing to be able to have it.

We weren´t able to do the baptism last week because there was some problems with the paperwork for the marriage. But we got it all worked out and the marriage will be tomorrow and we´ll have a baptism this Saturday! So I’m super excited about that! Ha this is the last full week of the change, I can´t believe it! This change has gone by super fast!

Thank you all for all of your love, support and prayers

I love you all!

Elder Westwood

28 Nov 2011

This week was a good week! Last Sunday we had one of our recent converts bring one of her non-member friends to church and after church we were able to talk to her for a while and she said that she loved it! Then we found out that the ward went to the Temple on Tuesday and she actually went with them! We met with her on Wednesday and she said that although she couldn´t go inside the temple she loved it there! So that was pretty awesome!

We also got to go to the temple on Tuesday as a zone but we went to the early morning session. I miss being able to go to the temple whenever I want. The Panama Temple is amazing inside! ha It´s a lot smaller than the other temples I´ve been to but it doesn´t matter because the Spirit is still the same! I love it! It was pretty interesting doing it in Spanish haha but surprisingly I actually understood basically all of it. It was pretty sweet.

Yesterday we had 4 of our investigators at church which was awesome! Two of them have baptismal dates already set and I think we´re gonna set the other two this week if they keep progressing which I´m sure they will. This week should be pretty busy because with the wedding of a couple of our investigators and then we´re going to have a baptism this weekend so that should be sweet!

Something kind of funny that happened this week. We were walking down the street after lunch on Wednesday I think it was, ha I can´t remember. But anyways we eat lunch with two other missionaries, one of them, Elder Mahina is Tongan and is about 6´5" and about 250, the other is Elder Padilla and he´s like 6´2" and probably 250 as well. Well anyways we were walking down the street and going around this corner when we saw this drunk guy who was smaller than me and probably weighed about 100. Well when he saw us he started to cross the street to talk to us like most drunk people are and we could tell that he was gonna try and start something. So he walk in front of us and stopped and I didn´t really feel like confronting him so I just slowed down and got behind Elder Mahina and Elder Padilla. As they walked closer to him I think the guy got a scared because of how big they are and then just kind of cowered away.Ha it was kind of funny how it all happened. I was glad to have those two around though.

Well, I think that about sums it up for this week. Thank you for all of your support and prayers! I hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving!

Elder Westwood