... I had the chance to interview another guy for baptism.

Hello Tennesseans and everyone else....yup,

So, this week has been a loooooooonnnnnggggg one. Ummmmm, to start off I guess I´ll give you the not so good news or as they say back in the states, the bad news, first. Well this happened like Wednesday night. I was sitting at my desk taking stats from my district and my comp was sitting on his bed taking photos of himself with my camera and yeah.....it turns out that in the process of him playing around with my camera that all of the photos I´ve taken since my first area, were deleted...So yeah, I don´t remember when the last time I saved photos onto the hard drive I´ve got and its very possible that I now have no pictures to remember of anyone or anything from the last 9 months of my life....so,, I don´t have any pictures to load or to send to you guys as of this moment, sorry.

Now, lets start this letter for real this time.

Overall my week has been pretty tranquilo, pretty much just waking up, working out, reading, walking, and a whole lota talking, lol. Because of the little incident with my companion and just how I´ve just gotten overall worn down with him, I called the zone leaders and we did divisions with them which I always love.

Now that I´m in a little bit of a leadership position everyone comes to me looking for the answers for all of their problems, which is pretty cool that they feel they can trust me like that, but it´s just like, ahhhhh...I'm still just a 20 yr old kid.. what do you want me to do about it? lol. But it´s nice to go on divisions...I feel like I´m co-pilot for a minute and just learn off of them. Speaking of learning, I am soooo excited to go back to school in like.....12 years, lol.

Also, this past Saturday I had the chance to interview another guy for baptism. This guy was so cool, and can´t really talk about what went down in the interview but just by listening to his testimony and his prayer at the end of the interview, I really believe that he will one day be a future stake president or something like that. It's sooo cool to be able to pass people off for baptism and see that look of relief when it's all said and done.

Now, Sunday, when we walked through the gates to get to church one of the members ran up to me and was like hey..we need to talk, so I was like huh...what´s he want? Well he tells me that the mother of the family that we just baptised left her family the night before, supposedly because the father has been abusive to the family and she just couldn´t take it anymore. So I was like alright I´ll see what I can do...even though I'm just a 20 yr old kid and have no clue what to do in this situation...I´ll fix the problem.

Anyways, after sacrament the branch president announced that my companion and I would be giving the talks today and I really hadn´t prepared for such a thing so I got up there and gave my talk about depending upon the Lord in all things and how we should always be preparing to enter into the temple since they are planning to go there this up coming week. And I think it went over well but who knows, maybe they didn't completely understand me, lol.

After church we went to visit our family and only the kids were there and they didn't really seem to look too sad.. they were playing and laughing and all that stuff. They said their mom was sick and had to go to Coatepeque and the Dad left that morning to go pick her up. So we left and went to the members house that told us about them and talked wtih him about this and he gave us some other crazy excuse about what was really going on. We ended up teaching the members nieces who showed up and I think that the next time we see them we´ll challenge them to be baptised. We´ll see, if I´m still here next week. Anyways, later that night we visited the family again and everyone was there and looking happy and the Mother explaind how yes, she was sick. We didn't mention that we thought the dad was beating her, and taught a lesson about the real love of Christ and how we can always depend on Him in those moments of anger and weakness to help us make better decisions. So I hope it helped.

But yeah, overall its just been a tiring week and I think I am just really tired, lol.

Anyways, changes are next week, the 9th I think, and I think I might get changed out but who knows. And I'm sure that the latinos are going to love those Christmas stockings and yeah, just thanks for everything.

I'm so happy that the kids still remember me, lol. I keep thinking that I'm going to come back one day and no one is going to remember who I am so that's really cool to hear that they still remember who I am, lol.

And you guys should eat all the candy you get your hands on!! One day you´ll get sent to Guatemala and it'll cost you an arm and a leg!
Anyways, love you all a ton, and now I gotta go.

Love you all tons,
Elder Marquis