E-mail received 8/9/2010

Dear Mom,

 

We had a great week this week! I got my new companion. His name is Elder Elliott. He's fresh from the MTC! He's from Farmington, Utah and comes from a pretty big family. Turns out the MTC taught him like nothing so I'm pretty much training him from scratch! But he's got a really great heart and a fire for obedience so it's turning out to be really easy. It's really just coming down to the nitty gritty of the lessons and also getting used to being a teacher and a missionary. He's really cool though.

 

It's really different training because I've always had companions who were older than me so I really am his introduction to a whole new way of living. It's really interesting how different missionary life is from regular life. I've been immersed in it so long that I can't even remember what it was like to do my own thing.

 

We had some really cool experiences this week. We finally found the first new investigator in a long time. He's a Filipino guy who's really been searching for the truth for a long time. He's really excited to learn about the Book of Mormon and about everything.

 

Our ward mission leader has decided to take a really member focused approach this week as well. With the change in missionaries he's going for really getting the members weekly immersed in actively doing things to help or learn about missionary work. He had us set a ton of appointments with members and then we're going to teach them just like investigators. We're probably going to have a really good week this next week with this new approach and we're excited to see member work take off more than it already is. And it's already the best I've experienced so far! Emerson's the greatest!

 

We had a really cool experience with one of the families in our ward. Saturday evening all of our appointments were falling through and we didn't know where to go and we felt prompted that we should go and visit that family, even though it was unexpected. I've never been in the home of that family either. They were home and we were able to visit with them for a little bit. Turns out they've been swamped with all kinds of things going on with their family company. We tried and tried to see if there was any way that we could help but unfortunately there wasn't much that we could do. However the Spirit did lead us to exactly the scripture that they needed. I read to them from Isaiah 26:3-4 and they really felt the power of that scripture help calm their fears about the really uncertain future. It was a really cool experience.

 

Just a heads up, you'll see one charge from last week for a suit that I bought at goodwill. Brand new, by the way, and fit me perfectly. I'm probably going to try and buy some pants today as well.

 

Thanks so much for all your support and let me know if there's anything that I can do for you guys!

 

-Elder Guinto

 

P.S. If you guys could send me the picture card that I sent you I will send more pictures. Also Elder Elliott got some cookies from his mom. That would be amazing if you sent me some because your cookies are amazing! I love you!