Email 04/30/12

Family, This past week was pretty good. We couldn't get any investigators to go to the temple with us so we went with a guy and his nonmember son from our neighbor ward. Really cool guy who doesn't really like going to church but loves the missionaries and has been helping them for a couple years, feeding them and taking them places. It was a really cool experience. I think the final stats on who went to the temple open house is around 100,000 people went thru the tours. That is pretty sweet. As for the area, like every lesson we teach is in spanish. All we have are spanish investigators. We are really pushing for a spanish branch in this area. We found out that we need 20 active, including 6 Melchizedek priesthood. That is pretty reasonable so we should be good. We are just really struggling getting them to church. It is like all of them don't believe that we have spanish members that they can interact with. Most spanish people in Marshall all go to similar churches but really just to socialize and hear the gospel in their own language. We are trying to just trick them all into coming to church one day and they can see each other and believe they aren't the only spanish people interested in the church. It doesn't help that the spanish people that are already members, don't go to church. Plus there is a major fued between 2 spanish member families that has been going on for awhile and neither are willing to drop it. That definitely puts a blockade in our reactivation process. We are really working hard with the spanish investigators and especially the part-member spanish families here. We are really progressing in this area. One family is the Haro's. We have been working with them for awhile, but now with Elder Perez we are able to communicate better with them. They went to the open house with another family from a different ward and really liked so we are going to follow-up on them. They have had dreams of being in all white in the temple with their kids and hope that the open house was an answer to their prayers. We are really praying for them. With the temple open house done, we are now allowed to take off our suit jackets and just wear white shirts when we go out which is really nice now that the weather is warming up and everything. Other than that we are doing really good here. I think that I will stay here in Marshall for a while longer. The spanish work is growing here so we really need to keep 2 spanish elders here. Thanks for all you do. Love, Elder Roe