Email 04/23/12

Family, This past week has been pretty good. We got a few new investigators that look pretty good. Pretty much all of our lessons have been spanish. It is amazing how easy you get in to talk to a spanish family when you have a companion that isn't white and is fluent in spanish. Really helpful. We also met a really nice old guy who was a member and now wants to come back and be baptized again. Really interesting because this is the second person that we've come into contact with that wants to come back to church. Really sweet because it means that they are ready to repent and change their lives. We also are working to help the investigators we already have, to start progressing. We were really sad that none of our investigators came to church yesterday. But we are working really hard with a couple part-member families that we hope will start coming to church together. There is the Martinez family. Only the mom and 1 of the daughters is a member. They struggled coming to church but one of their friends, like family, just came from Mexico to live with them. He is a convert too and we hope that he can help us really get them to come to church. We are planning on going to the temple open house with them this saturday. This is the last week so we gotta go. As of last sunday, 40,000 ppl have already gone thru the temple, so the church is really getting their name out there. Our whole mission is looking forward to a surge of new converts and progressing the whole missouri/kansas area bc of the temple. My spanish is improving which is good. It is actually really funny when we knock on a spanish persons door and they immediately look to Elder Perez and talk to him and when I speak up and say something or whatever they are like super suprised and like "Oh, habla espanol su companero?" Although I have noticed spanish getting rather difficult since Elder Perez is fluent they talk like super fast and stuff to him and I struggle to keep up. I get like 70% at least tho. But all the time they are like "asdhflkjasdljk fadkfjhadfhdfhaksjd h hahahahahahaha".....a bunch of blended sentences crammed into like 3 words it sounds like then they laugh at the end. Really amusing. But everything has been really good around here. The weather is calming down to be a cool/warmer feel which is nice. We are excited for the cultural celebration on May 5th, I think. It is really sweet sounding. We will be practicing all day then performing it in front of President Monson and Elder Holland. All the missionaries are hoping that they hold a conference to just talk to all the missionaries here or at least we get to shake his hand and stuff. All good here. Thanks for everything. Love Elder Roe