This week was a good week.  We have a lot of good going for us right now.  Sometimes I feel like you have to look for the good, other times you can see it everywhere.  This week was pretty good.  We had stake conference this week, so it was a little bit difficult to get investigators and less actives to attend. (They had to go to Urdaneta) But those we have been working with the most did go.

     This week we found and started teaching one great less active family.  They were very warm friendly and accepting toward us.  They didn't seem very much like Less Active members.  We managed to teach them a few times and then later we mentioned it to another member in the ward.  The other ward member was amazed.  You're teaching them. They actually let you in.  Those are the kind of reactions we were getting.  The ward was surprised they would even talk to us, and yet the family is doing well, keeping commitments and so forth. 
      We also have an investigator who should be getting baptized this Saturday.  This will be my first baptism with Elder De Jesus, and he excited because it is also his first baptism.  The Sister getting baptized is great.  She found the gospel and the truth, and now tells everyone about it.  She has given us so many referrals.  She tells everyone to come to church.  She even knows and encourages less actives to come to church.  She has been religious her whole life and now it finally so sure she has found what she wanted.  We are very excited for her. 
     We also found a new investigator in what I would call a miraculous way this week.  First off we were having a slow day.  It was raining all day, every appointment we had fell through, every backup plan we had made had been tried and we had just essentially been walking to appointments all day without any teaching.  After walking away from the house that we should have had an appointment, we decided to go to a recent convert's house that was nearby.  It seemed the only option at this point.  But it just didn't feel right to me.  I felt like we should do something else.  So I decided we would go back to the house we had just come from.  We were probably one hundred yards away and we started walking back.  When we got to the house, the person we were supposed to teach was still not there, but there was a family friend there.  The family friend had never talked to the missionaries before and agreed to let us teach her.  We ended up teaching a very receptive woman Tala.  We had a really good lesson, and then afterward we asked her to say the closing prayer.  During the prayer she very sincerely thanked God for allowing her to meet with the missionaries.  It was a very great prayer, and certainly made us missionaries feel pretty good too. 

I guess that's all I will relate right now, but I have a suggestion for the ward news letter.  I think in the ward news letter, accompanying  the missionary reports should be their missionary addresses.  Then ward members could easily find those addresses to write the missionaries.  Just my opinion.
Good luck to you all and have a wonderful week,
                                                            Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill