Feb. 7th 2011

Well the weeks are going by faster and faster. We picked up a lot of new investigators this week and hopfully some of them turn out good. We have one baptismal date right now with an old guy who just sits aroud all day. He has already read to 2nd nephi and retold us the whole story and he just loved it. We are hoping he continues to grow & work towards baptism. We have a few others that are so close to baptism but won't commit. One wants to be baptized but she is scared to go back to her old life after. She doesn't feel worthy to do it either. We are hoping to be able to work with her and that she will get baptised. Also we have a hatian who believes joseph smith was a prophet believes the book of mormon is the word of god, but also thinks that the pastor who baptised him had the authority so we are working hard with him too. There are a lot of hatians here that used to have quite a bit of money in hatti but after the earthquake lost everything. They are a humble people though.

 

We had an open house at the church last week and the Whitakers, the office couple, came up and did an activity with pictures of Jesus and a bunch of pictures of scripture stories then they went out and get sea shells and then the people decorated the frames. That went really well we had 30 nonmembers there and gained a lot of contacts there and we hope some of those work out.

 

We have been having more success this week and hope to continue it. We have been working hard and seeing it pay off but we still need to try and get people baptized. They dont receive all the blessings untill they are baptized. It is hard to see people turn it down and not want anything to do with it.

 

Thats about all this week and next week we are going to the temple so my pday wont be untill the next wednesday so I will write then. 

 

con amor

 

elder Jacob Holmes

Jan. 31st, 2011

Hey well my 2nd week in the field went geat. It went by fast. We had a tough week picking up investigators but we just picked up 5 in the last two days and a few of them are promising. In this country you never know if they are going to keep there commitments or be at the meeting you setup so you just have to keep trying. we are still teaching a few Hatians and they are good we just picked up a Dominican who speaks english too. His parents work in the casa de campo I guess it is the nicest resort in the carribean but his mom speaks 5 languages including arabic. Some peolple are just born with the gift of tounges like most Hatians. We have one of the new converts helping us teach an english class and he knows 4 languages learning a 5 and he is only 21.

 

My spanish is coming along great. I can undersand a lot now and contribute more and more to the lessons. Elder Allen is an awesome teacher and knows the gospel well. We have a lot of fun together. La Romana is a nice place. there are 8 elders here and 4 hermanas so quite a bit. we went to contact down at the bottom of our area called La Romana del oeste and that is a rich area. At moments it seemed like we were back at the states. There were some big houses and we ran into a family that we were going to teach but they were moving at they thought out of our area. But we ran into and now are starting to teach them. I hope it turns out cause we have to walk about 30 minutes to get out to them. the public transport doesnt go out there. But we are hoping things will pick up we are working hard and doing all we can.

 

Thats about all i have for this week. Wish you all a great week. Trust in the Lord for all and do everything you can to follow the example of Jesus Christ. love you all

 

con amor