Elder Andrew Peña:

April 5, 2010
Hello everyone! this week was great! AGAIN! Ok so first off while I would not like to jinx myself so I will " knock on wood. " I haven't been sick or hurt or have done anything to myself this past two years! And the last three weeks of my mission the 1st one I sprained my ankle and it turned all black and blue and swollen to where I had no ankle! Then the 2nd week I was sick and couldn't talk and my throat hurt and I was losing my voice and last week on Monday I was playing ultimate Frisbee with our zone and while playing, dumb me ran for the Frisbee as fast as I could and trying to catch the thing I went to dive for the Frisbee and my middle finger hit the ground and I slid over my finger and bent it back to what seemed to be my elbow because it hurt so bad! My first thought was that my finger had fallen off! Anyways I went to a member in our ward who is a physical therapist and told me I hyper extended my finger and the ligaments are tender and swollen so the 2nd and 3rd day my hand was huge and you couldn't even tell I had a middle knuckle! It was bruised inside my hand and today it is still sore and still a little swollen! So I hope I don't continue to hurt myself because I may come home on a stretcher!:) haha.... but ok starting with the week! It was amazing. We set a baptismal date with Quincy Williams. He is 9 and from a part member family. They have been coming back to church for the past 3 months. He will be getting baptized on April 17th! So hopefully that will turn out to be my last baptism on my last weekend in the mission field! We had a good lesson this week with Joe Brown who is 20 years old and wants to know a little more about our church and has a lot of questions! He came to the first two sessions of conference and seemed to like it and had some questions! He seems a little more curious than wanting to be baptized but I think his curiosity will turn out for the better, eventually! We are going to try harder to teach one of our investigators named John Bjork, good guy, very kind and open! We are just struggling to catch him home! We hopefully found a awesome family. Her name is Jamie and she has three kids and she has family members that are members of the church in Utah and she wants to do a church tour so hopefully this week we can take her and her family on one! She was super open in speaking with us so I hope it all goes good. We have an appointment this Tuesday at 2:00pm! General Conference was amazing! I loved it! It is the best thing that has ever happened to this world! I love going and listening to the messages and the testimonies and to the warnings that we need to be aware of! The world is ripening in wickedness and everywhere we go there is something that is trying to distract us! Music and television and so much that tries to catch our attention! One of my favorite talks out of soooo many was in the priesthood session when President Uchtdorf talked about an experiment some doctor did to test these 4 year old kids! He put them in a room gave them a marshmallow and said if you wait for a period of time you can have two marshmallows. If you eat it you don't get anymore! He left the room and left the kids alone and watched from a two way mirror or whatever you call them! He said that many of them immediately ate the marshmallow and some waited a couple of minutes and 30 percent of them waited until they could have two marshmallows! I guess the doctor thought it was interesting and later realized later in life the kids that waited were far more successful than those that didn't wait! They had better grades in school they had an education in college and successful marriages those that didn't were the opposite! He went on and explained much about the blessings of patience and taught much the doctrine of patience! I loved it! So what do I notice? In the last two days I find myself very impatient!.. Yikes.... it's nothing new. I always need to repent! That was my week and I loved it all! I hope everything goes well and I hope you all have a good week and I will look forward to reading the emails of those that email me this upcoming week!:)
Elder Peña