Week of July 28, 2008 -- To Mom

 Dear Family, Friends, and all else,

Dad, Feliz Cumpleanos and Happy Birthday!!!!!   I love you soooo much and hearing about the dinner you recieved made me so hungry.  Thank you for your letter; it made me feel wonderful.  I hope you are having the grandest time in Peru and that all our family are treating you well.

I don't remembering ever checking out Across the Universe...I hope it's a mistake.  I don't even know what it's about.

Funny you ask about weather, Mom.  Well...I refrained from telling you about weather last week for fear of what the new might cause, but it should be okay this week.  Yesterday was somewhat crazy.  We were a little out north of the city visiting a really cool family from the ward, The Johnsons (no ward is complete without a Johnson family).  We had to do lots of tracting, and their house is where and what you would think houses would be at (almost in the middle of nowhere; house upon house spread apart widely).  It was about 3pm and we had just started tracting, and what was cool is on one side of the street there were houses and on the other side, a huge field and land stretched out for miles, so we could see rough weather was coming.  And sure enough, after about 15 minutes of tracting and getting turn down at several houses, it started to rain.  Elder McLaws said that we wouldn't go back until we gave away a book of mormon.  At this point it wasn't raining hard.  We talk to another Lady that was very nice, under the shelter of her porch and she said that she was a retired teacher.  I definitely thought that she was going to be the one, but she was learned and said that she had access to the book of mormon at the library.  I was like, man...almost.  I could relate with her well, having teacher for parents.  But she didn't want the book.  We went to two more houses.  The Lady that finally took the book of mormon was sick and didn't want to let us in.  What was weird is their was lightning in our background that was kinda distracting her.  She took the book of mormon after we testified of it's truthfulness and we were off.  It was pouring buckets and buckets of rain.  My planner is all ruined, pretty much by now, which really stinks.  Even though we were soaking wet by the time we got back to the car, we decided to go tracting in apartments instead of go home and change, which was a crazy but good idea.  After we prayed, we went back to town to apartments and did some more tracting.  The weather changes like crazy here.  My red/blue tie is ruined and it left a red stain on my white shirt that I didn't notice until today.  Ready for some more crazy news....Well, last week on Saturday, we had a tornado warning; sirens were going off, but it wasn't as bad as people were making it out to be.  Here they have radios that beep when something is coming and that notify you.  The tornado was reported to may have touched down near Albion, which a city about 10 miles from Marshalltown....yep, crazy weather; just know that we are protected.

Fun but crazy week, let me tell you.

We had Zone Conference this last Thursday.  It was exactly what we all needed to get motivated and go out and teach the restored gospel.  We learned a whole lot of things.  Somewhat sad news is the number of missionaries is decreasing next transfer from 150 to about 120 (maybe less), so they are closing some areas; what goes along with this news is there will not be two sets of missionaries in Marshalltown anymore.  The english are moving out at transfers.  It means that Elder McLaws and me will be doing the best we can to run the missionary efforts in this city.  It also means that we won't be able to make close associations with our friends, Elder Hewitt and Elder Curtis, from Idaho and Texas respectfully.  They are truly good guys and great examples in my lives.  I'm sad to see them go and we are going to take as much advantage of them as possible while they are here.

Now for the missionary work.  Unfortunately, no investigators to church yesterday, but many less active families are coming back, which makes me so happy, you have no idea.  Actually, Patrick did make it, which is wonderful, and now he is on his 6 day of not drinking.  Please pray for him so he can sucessfully quit.

We had to do some marriage couseling on Saturday with Maria Guadalupe and Antonio, a couple who are not yet married.  Maria wants to baptized into the church and she knows that she must marry antonio.  It was tough business, hearing them argue, in spanish no less.  Fortunately, Elder McLaws was there and I helped the best I could.  Hopefully if all goes well, they should be able to get married in the next 8 days civilly, and she will be ready to get baptized.

We've also helped a family whose house was somewhat flooded by the rain.  Their basement was terribly destroyed and the worse part (besides the smell) was the fact that this family was a packrat family.  They saved basically everything given to them in life.  It was absolutely a mess that had to be cleaned up.

Well I better get this sent out before time is up.

I love you all, and please write back be it email or snail mail (preferably snail mail).

Elder John C. Gonzales