Man sounds like you guys are crazy busy. Ugh. I can't believe Katelyn's actually dating people. Bleh. Oh by the way my new companion Elder Coffin thinks she's cute and he's way better than anyone else. My new area is AWESOME! I'm now serving in Emerson, NJ the greatest area ever!! I'm completely in love with this place already! It's super rich country (again) but the ward here is awesome. The members are super supportive of missionaries and missionary work. The only problem is they feed us like crazy! I've already gained five pounds here! Oh by the way there's a scale in our apartment now and I found out I lost twenty more pounds while I was in Fairlawn so I was down to 200 but now I'm 205 because of the darn supportive members! They're awesome though. We really work through them and this area is on fire! We have two people set with baptismal dates here, one of them we set yesterday, and they're awesome! There's a town called Bergenfield in our area which is like totally filled with Filipino people and everyone in the ward is excited for me because I'm Filipino. I'm told I'm going to baptize like crazy in that area just because of my heritage. My district is HUGE. I'm the district leader of a five companionship district. That's a pretty big jump from a two companionship district. But it's really cool. One of the companionships is a Spanish area so I might have to give interviews in spanish! I've had a lot of opportunity to use all the Spanish that I learned in Paterson. I talked with the father of one of the members, who is a Jehovah Witness, for like 35 minutes of just straight Spanish because he couldn't speak English. It was pretty cool to see that I could carry on an intelligent conversation in another language. We talked about all kinds of stuff but mostly about how we have to make the Gospel a bigger part of our lives. It was pretty cool. Elder Coffin is basically a carbon copy of me. We have the same humor, the same eating habits, he loves to sing. It's going to be an awesome transfer. It's just like being on my mission with Jaron basically. We eat extremely healthy, when we're not being fed by the members at least. We eat a lot of strange things too which are really healthy like aloe vera leaves and ginger root tea. The aloe vera leaves don't really taste like anything but it's basically like eating a lugie. But apparently they're super good for your muscles and joints. The ginger root tea, which we brew ourselves from fresh ingredients, is an amazing drink. I'll have to show it to you guys when I get home but it's super good for your heart and intestines and it just feels amazing to drink. I'm looking forward to a quite prosperous transfer but I have to somehow find a way to get eating under control because I'm eating way too much here. I'm getting kinda pudgie. Man we've had some really cool teaching miracles here though. I'm definitely starting to learn how to effectively do member work here and also we're seeing a lot of success in bringing people to the waters of baptism. I really feel like I'm finally seeing success and finally really, REALLY enjoying doing the work. The past few transfers of just seeing minimal success have really made it kind of drag but I read a great talk in the June Ensign that really just got me inspired about what I needed to change. It's called, "Don't Be In A Hurry." I highly recommend it! It made me realize that Heavenly Father wants us to be dedicated but he also wants us to have joy. There needs to be a balance in the work that we do. We were sent here to have joy, while dedicated service will most certainly bring that, if we get to lost in the things that we need to do or feel like we need to do and don't give time to breathe or grow we aren't giving Heavenly Father room to bless us. While we should always be diligent we should always make sure we don't overburden ourselves and thus dullen our spiritual sensitivity. I feel like I'm finally enjoying my mission. While I'm not really here to enjoy it, I'm here to reap and labor but now I feel like I'm really getting everything I can out of it. Work, work, work, work with really no fruit isn't efficient useful work at all. You guys should read the talk but remember there must be a balance we can't be all play and no work either. Then nothing gets accomplished and you feel like a failure. I really feel like I'm establishing a balance here that will last my whole mission and I'm really happy to be serving here in Emerson. I hope you guys have a great rest of your vacation and I can't wait to hear from you next week.
-Elder Guinto
P.S. The mail system is changing. We're now only going to get mail twice a transfer. Just a heads up. Also, when I was at the temple, apparently something has changed with the way garment distribution goes so I could only get 7 pairs of garments and I couldn't get drilux bottoms. So it would be really cool if you guys could get me maybe 2-3 more sets of garments in the drilux. tops are medium and the bottom is a 32" waist.
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