Letter #85 1/7/13 Hey Family!!

Dear family and friends. We had a great week this last week. It was the last week of the hollidays here. The hollidays don´t end here until the 6th of January. It´s the day of the 3 reyes magos! The reyes magos come to your house and give you gifts, kind of like santa clause. Yesterday a lot of members from our ward had a special meal together to celebrate and they invited us. It was nice, except for when a sister spit a mouth ful of fruit punch all over my companion and i. She litterally drenched us with punch. My shirt was completely red! It was an accident so we forgave her.

This week we worked super hard. We are blessed here in this area because we litterally have no problems teaching people. There are tons of people that are willing to listen to us, and tons of people that are willing to accept baptism dates. This week we put 8 dates with new investigadors that we found, but unfortunately its really hard to bring them to church. We are teaching quite a few elderly people (ages 60 and up) And they always come up with the same excuses that they´re sick or tired. I have felt prompted several times to share Mathew 11:28-30. "come unto me and i´ll give you rest". I think it fits perfectly for all the elderly people we´re teaching. They all want to rest! We explain to them that they only way to find true rest is by coming unto christ (or going to church). I put a lot of emfasis on "COME unto me". We have to act in order to get the blessing. It was very clear with everyone that they had to go to church, but Sunday morning they were all still sleeping. We´re going to be searching this week for people that have a real desire to come unto Christ. 

Yesterday we taught an awesome family. It´s a mom and her son. The mom is 70 and her son is 45 and single. They both have their problems; the son is a drinker and the mom is missing a leg. They were both really excited when we invited them to church for the next week and accepted baptism dates for February as well. 

The branch here isn´t too big. We had 40 people in church yesterday but only because there was a baby blessing. I´d say about half the people came from the other branch that´s here in Costa Rica to support the family. Here, about half the people work in the field, and the other half work in Culiacan, so there´s a giant mix of people here. Some rich and some poor. The neighborhoods are also really weird. You´ll see a giant mansion and the neighbors house is a single room made of junk.  I love being a missionary and i love the gospel. Have a great week!!! Elder Mecham