February 7, 2011

Hey Everyone!!!

I really like the emails Mom and Dad sent me this week so I will talk about those first. CONGRATULATIONS GUS!!! South Africa will be a really exciting mission and I know he will have a lot of success there because he is an awesome kid. When does he report? Also dad mentioned the Superbowl...I would be lying if I said I didn't see a part of the 2nd quarter!haha We had to take our laundry to a members house and they had it on! Also I can't believe the weather was in the teens this week in Arizona, I guess Al gore was wrong about the whole global warming thing! And Katie got her patriarchal blessing, what a neat experience. I have read mine like 500 times here on the mission but the best time to read it for me is when I am feeling down and need a pick me up. If we are living the way we need to be the things in the blessing will happen that have been promised to us but at the same time we definitely need to strive for the blessing that have been promised to us because the blessings promised to us are the ones the Lord wants to give us and we will reach our full potential when we obtain these blessings. (Don't know if that made sense).

This week was a good one but at the same time very difficult. We worked really hard and did a lot of contacts this week but it didn't result too much and we still don't have a ton of investigators. We had a baptism this week because we were working with some paperwork and found a 10 year old kid, his name is Jan Carlos and he is a real good kid but doesn't have a lot of help from the family. We need to keep working with him or it will be hard for him to stay out of trouble. On Saturday as we were setting up people to go to church and stuff we learned that every single one of our investigators was going to be out of town for the week. We only had 1 person that we thought would go to church this week but....she bailed out at the last minute so we had 0 in church, which is tough. All of that happened in the week but the thing that most frustrating was on Sunday. Alejandra and Thomas didn't show up to church so we went over to her house right after sacrament meeting (the main meeting we have) and when we got there she had a big bloody cloth over her eye. He ex-boyfriend showed up the night before and punched her in the face like 10 times. her eye was swollen shut completely and she had blood still running from her nose, a lump on her forehead and a bunch of other stuff. The part that put me over the edge was that this pathetic excuse of a man, after beating the mother of his 2 kids half to death went after Thomas (the kid I baptized). He hit Thomas a couple of times but then Thomas got away. She asked if I would give her a blessing and I did and I felt really strongly to tell her that if she left the place where she was and stayed strong in the church she would receive every blessing that she needed and she would be safe from the pain that she had experienced previously. All of this happened yesterday so as you can imagine I am still a little frustrated about it. The police know about it and so does the ward. We talked to the bishop and I think we are going to help her move out the house and find her a safer place to live so that he can't find her or the kids. I just ask you to pray for her and the kids and also pray for me that I don't kill the guy if I see him on the streets...haha

Well I am running low on time but I hope you all realize how blessed you are and really appreciate it. I have grown to love some people here so much and I miss you all but I need to be here right now. I love what I am doing with every fiver of my being and appreciate the support I have from all of you and for all of your prayers. I challenge you all to do something special for someone this week, big or small it doesn't matter. I will most likely be moving Alejandra out of her house today and i would really love to hear back from you guys on some of the things that you are planning to do for others. Love you all with all of my heart!

Yours Truly,

Elder Cody Dastrup