..."I know this is the true Church of Jesus Christ..."

Hey all, So big news of the week we challenged Karen Letona, the girl we've been working with for like the past 3 months this past Friday...and she got BAPTIZED this past Saturday!!! It was so amazing and crazy at the same time. I tell you, Satan will stop at nothing to see the Lord's work frustrated.

The baptism was set for 11 in the morning so we left the house around 8 to go and set up the church, buy the cake and goodies and just make it a special day for Karen. When we get there, there is dirt all over the floors, in the baptismal font and just a mess everywhere really. So we cleaned that up the very best that we could. When we attacked the font...the drain decided that it wanted to be clogged and so we had to run back to our house..about 5 min. away....then run back and try and plunge the font... with little luck. The drain just would not drain and so we had to resort to the old fashion method of broom and bucket to get the dirty water out of the font...long time and very tedious!!!

But yeah, we finally had the font cleaned out sufficiently and filling up, the chairs all lined up and ready, the background music playing to invite the spirit and the refreshments ready to be eaten after the baptism, everything was finally going to plan! POW, take that Satan!!

Anyways, the baptism went over perfectly and at the end Karen pulled me aside and told me how thankful that she was for everything and how even though at times she was stubborn she was grateful that we didn't give up on her. I can't explain how many times I've heard this same story. I would say that a majority of the people here in La Blanca were just like her. Most of them didn't know that this really was the true church of Jesus Christ until after they were baptised.

Something else we see on a daily basis also is that Satan never stops. With the less active members that we meet and talk to, I can see that Satan knows our weak spots and will attack at them when we are at our weakest. Something that President Maravilla told to us in a recent conference that we had was that Satan really does have power. He was one of the chosen great and loved ones of the Father. But because of greed and lust for power Satan fell and he wants nothing else than for us to fall as well.

I know this is the true church of Jesus Christ. And although I tried to fight against the plain and simple truths for a large portion of my life...picking out the faults of other members or trying to translate the words of prophets to make them look like liars... I now know the truth. The truth is that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God and was called to restore His gospel to us, to the children of God. I know that no matter what anyone says against the church or whatever fault I think I find in the gospel, that there are too many truths and too many coincidences that point our church being the one and only true restored church of Jesus Christ.

Anyways, funny note. As me and my companion were walking to Internet we saw a bunch of people at one of the local stores and they were doing one of those activities where you blow up balloons and try and pop them with your butt, lol. Anyways one woman just slammed her tush on the edge of the seat and popped right onto the floor, jajajaja!!! It doesn't matter where you are, watching someone act like a fool and fall on their butt is ALWAYS funny, lol. So yup, that's the highlights of this weeks adventures of LA BLANCA!!!!

Love you tons,
E. Brandon Marquis

...big news of week..Changes!!

Hey all,

So big news of the week is that me and Elder Mosley had changes. He´s now in San Felipe, where I started and I´m still here but now with Elder Ryan Thomas. The dude is huge! He seriously is like 6´9, super tall guy and makes me look like a midget, lol! Pretty cool guy over all.

Anyways, pretty good week overall. We've been teaching lessons like crazy and getting a lot of new investigators to teach which is pretty fun. Elder Thomas is funny. I think both me and Elder Thomas are going to learn some humility and respect for these people a little bit more during our time together.

But yeah sorry that today is going to be another short little letter. There is a parade outside and everyone wants to go out and see that soooooo....sorry!! But really nothing much happened this week other than the night Elder Thomas got here one of the guys from the office, Elder Fetters came by and worked with us for a little bit. }

And as far as papaya goes....that is the most tasteless mushy food I've ever eaten in my entire life!!!! YUCKH!!!! I think I'll stick with pineapple!

BTW, I did get those packages! Thank you soooooo much! The clothes are awesome!! There is nothing better in the mission than a huge bag of cheese its, gummy snakes, chocolate, and new clothes!!!!

Love you all tons,
Elder Marquis

...it's like the spirit put me on auto pilot and took over...

Hey all,

Ewwwwwwwww....I can´t believe you ate papaya! That stuff is sooooooo grosss! Just like mushy nothingness, blah! I´d much rather stick with the other fruits they have down here like the, star fruit, watermelon, melon, strawberry, moras, cocos, mangos,...I dont know. They have a lot of fruit that's really good that we don't have in the states and I don't know the name of them...OH!...theres one called Guanaba that's really good and some others that are all spicky on the outside but when you open them up they are like huge peeled grapes the size of your thumb!! So good!

We also did something special for my 13th month mark and my comps 6 month mark. We went out and bought a quart of ice cream!!!! Yeah, it's a little pricey but when you haven't eaten ice cream in a long time....ITS GOOOOOOOOD!!!

So this past week was pretty interesting...

To start off Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty chill. My comp and all the other nuevos had a conference with president over all the stuff that we´ve already learned which is cool.

And a fantastic surprise happened to me also. While hanging out with the zone leaders this past Tuesday, they let me go to the doctor again to get my foot checked out....again, lol. And guess what..turns out I had yet another ingrown toenail, in the same toe again, except on the other side of my toe, lol. So right now my big toe just has the middle part of my nail, lol, bummer. How funny is that huh? I´ve had 3 ingrown toenails, all on the same toe, and twice on the same side, lol, pure luck I tell ya!

And yeah we heard about the tsunamis. Because my area is like right by the beach we had the assistants calling us the whole week saying that they might be pulling us out of our area so that we wouldn´t get hit by it. I'm guessing just like over there, nothing happened. Just some light rain showers and some heat lightning storms!

Also, one of our best friends down here, Karla Maldanado, just had surgery and so we´ve been helping them out a lot lately. They are they family that feeds us on Sundays and the occasional dinner, so we want to keep them happy, lol. But anyways, the day before her surgery she asked me to give her a blessing to comfort and protect her through her operation. Honestly, I don´t know what happened. Like while I was giving her the blessing it was like I was just completely out of it but still talking. My companion told me that while I was giving the blessing and afterwards everyone in the room was crying and...I don´t know what happened, it's like the spirit just put me on auto pilot and took over. Which kinda makes me think about the patriarchs and how it must feel when they give blessings. They are the mouth pieces while the spirits telling the people what it is they need to hear. I don´t know. Just a pretty cool spiritual experience. And if you´re wondering, yes she is fine, lol.

And yeah if you can send a new suit THAT WOULD BE SOOOOO COOL! Mine is a little tattered and the best guy to make suits just moved into the mission Xela boundaries so I´m going to have to wait a little while longer to get my England world cup suit made. But yeah a nice gray or black would do the trick as well lol!!!!

Love you guys sooooooooo much,

and make sure to eat ice cream with my gramps!!!

Elder Marquis

...we have the baptism set for the end of the month..

Buenos tardes,

So hey, responding to your comment above about school and all of that.. I´ve been thinking of a couple of options. First, going to ETSU and finishing up my general studies maybe if possible to go to BYU Hawaii, sounds just like here just cleaner and in English. After which, I plan on getting a degree in business and probably in accounting also. I haven´t completely come to a finite decision but I´ve had my mind set for something in the world of business for almost my whole life. I would definitely love to learn Chinese among many other languages that should help my business life and I don´t think it will be too difficult since I kinda know the tricks to learning a different language now. But then again, I was thinking about coming home and getting my CDL license and doing some type of trucking for about six months and save up a good amount of money and then starting school. But really, if I learned at least one thing in my mission it would be that EDUCATION is practically the most important thing in this life..next to family that is, so really would love to go to school so I can achieve my dream of doing business in all parts of the world. So we´ll see what happens.

A little run down of this past week. Nothing to big and extravagant to talk about really. I think the most of the action, as usual, happened more towards the end of the week. I don´t know if that´s because we are trying to hustle and make sure everything goes smoothly for the next week or what but yeah. Really everything worth talking about happened yesterday actually... we also put a baptismal date with Karin Letona, the girl we´ve been working with for like ever for this coming Saturday on the 12th, so that should be exciting. Besides that yesterday, we showed up at church just like any other Sunday and set up all of the seats and set up the sacrament table and everything and then right before we got started, President Baudilio, the branch president, walked up to us with another guy and said here´s your new investigator. His name is Jorge Louis Hernandez, and he is a really cool guy. My companion had to go up and help pass the sacrament but I sat back with Jorge and helped explain everything. Anyways long story short, at the end of church we told him that we would pass by his house later that night. When we did he had everything all cleaned up and he even raked the dirt in front of his house to make it look better. It´s crazy how people will go out of the way for us just to be hospitable. After we taught him about the restoration of the church and everything he told us how calm and peaceful it was going to our church and he told us that he plans on going to our church every Sunday from now on. He works all through the week so we can only teach him on Sundays, but my companion and I decided that the next week we are going to challenge him to be baptised for the end of this month!!!!

Not too long after we finished our lesson with Jorge we bumped into one of our old investigators walking around outside of a bar. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed. We spent about two in half months teaching him, he had a date to be baptised, and was finally getting his life back together; then he found a new job where he was working every day all day to the point that we never had the chance to teach him anymore and we lost him. Anyways, we were walking down the street and we saw him but we really didn`t want to talk to him while he was drunk so we walked on past him, until he noticed us and walked over to us. He reeked of alcohol and started complaining to me about someone had came into his house and ripped apart the Book of Mormon that we gave him. It was pretty messed up he was hanging all over me just crying and we it was all over he just walked right back into the bar. Personally, I was pretty upset, mostly because I now reeked of beer and alcohol which is no bueno. The saddest part is that when we drove by this morning around 8, he was still sitting out there on the road drinking. Maybe he will get fired from that new job that he has so we will be able to fix him up again. I just don´t get sometimes. Even while he is drunk he was still telling us how he knew everything we taught him was true but then he fell back into that old lifestyle again.

So yeah, for now we have Karin Letona set for baptism for this weekend and hopefully we will have Jorge taught and ready for the end of the month.

Love you all tons,
Elder Marquis