March 3 - Gilbert

Hello mother! good to hear from you every week! ya know... one of my last companions had a hard time... his parents never wrote him! or rarely. so he would always have to remind them every week. so thank you for writing me every week! i am extremely lucky. well blessed. haha this guy we were teaching yesterday. his name is joe mar. he is from the Philippines. he is awesome. he says that his friends always tell him how lucky he is, and he corrects them and says, "no i'm not lucky. i'm blessed." so i'm blessed! not lucky. That is so awesome that kellie got into BYU! man we're going to party it up! oh wait... excuse me... we will have an enjoyable time studying. haha no but that is awesome to hear! she worked so hard. i remember thinking to myself, after i got into BYU, "ummm... now what." for so long you were trying to get good grades in middle school, so that you could get into good classes in high school. and get good grades in high school so that you could go to BYU. and now you're in... haha i remember feeling like, "what's next?" thankfully it all kinda worked itself out. 

Investigators are doing great! vanessa is getting baptized this weekend.  She expressed to us yesterday how happy she was to be able to turn her life around. "The Lord works from the inside out. ... Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums." President Benson. Vanessa is proof of that! We picked up a few more investigators this week. One is Savanna. We received a referral for her so we contacted her and told her that we would have a lesson with her before this mission choir concert thing (that i don't participate in because i'm not a singer). So we taught her 30 minutes before. The fellowship that was with her recognized someone else that was hanging around the church building waiting for the choir concert to begin (some other missionaries brought him but he was just coming to come. not interested at all). so the fellowship dragged him into the lesson. He announced at the beginning of the lesson that he was agnostic and that he just wanted to be a bystander in the lesson. initially Savanna said she just wanted to learn about different churches, but we taught about the role of the holy ghost in conversion. and about faith in Christ and repentance. we invited her to be baptized (elder tahuri was practicing for the choir concert, so it was just me and a guy from the ward teaching), and she said something like, "i'm not ready for that. i want to learn about the church." So we kept teaching her. and we asked this fellowship to talk about his conversion. he joined the church like 5 years ago. he did so. the spirit was super strong. so we invited her again and she accepted. mar 21. it was a great lesson. but the best part is that the "agnostic" attended the choir concert, and walked up to elder tahuri and said, "I felt something." and then decided to come to church. so we had savanna and collin (agnostic) and a guy named darshan, who is another investigator nto even part of this story, in singles ward yesterday. kinda a long update for investigators. i could've just said, "all is well" but i know you don't like it when i just say that! i'm getting better! 

nothing in particular for my birthday! i'll think about it this week i guess. because i know you don't like to hear that!

love you much!

elder bronson