Week 20

Dear Sanderson Family,                                                                     12/04/2012

Sorry that this is a late letter. Yesterday an Elder from the area of West Abudancia hurt his knee pretty bad so we had to spend a lot of time at the Hospital with him because we are the closest Elders with a car. He's fine and should be ready to work in a week or so.

This past week in Rio Bravo was a struggle to say the least. We have been really trying to get the members out to lessons with us to help fellowship the investigators that we have.  We had a lot of member present lessons set up but every single one of them fell through (about 10).  Either the investigators could not make the lesson or the members bailed out at the last minute.  So once again we had no one at church this Sunday

:(  That night Elder Magallanes and I knelt in fervent prayer and asked the Lord for some divine intervention. Later that night we found 2 solid families that want to learn more about the gospel! They all accepted baptismal dates for the 30th of December! So stoked! I feel as though the past few weeks was a testing period for us here in Rio Bravo.  Hopefully we can improve and press onward this week!

This past Friday the TMM all met in McAllen for the first ever Mission Conference. Every missionary gathered in McAllen to be instructed from Elder Schwitzer of the Seventy. He spoke on how important it was that our investigators knew what true repentance was. It opened my eyes to how true repentance builds lasting conversion and conviction in the Gospel. During the lunch break he walked up to me and asked if he could interview me for a few minutes after the Conference.  During the interview he just sat there staring at me for a few minutes...I swear he was reading my soul. After a while he finally spoke and said that the Spirit has whispered to him some advice that he wished to give me. I walked out of that interview a changed missionary. He wrote down my home address because he said that he would write you all a letter haha so look out for that. That man was so in-tune with the Spirit and it just radiated from him like I have never felt before. At the end of the interview he allowed me to ask him any deep doctrine question I wanted just for fun. Haha so I asked him how i could get the Second Comforter, that is, to see Jesus Christ and have my calling and election made sure. He laughed and told me that he would write me when he found out himself.  I was sorta disappointed haha ;)

Thank you so much for the package haha its a pretty awesome idea! I love the homemade bon-bons, so if there are any extra at home please send them my way :) Sorry about not sending all the baptismal photos. Usually I do not have my camera on me so my Recent Converts are the ones with all the photos :( I will be better at that from now on though. I didn't know you were making a scrap book for me.

con carino,

Elder Craig Sanderson