Dear Family and Friends,

Well it sounds like you guys had a fun week. With all of the horseback rides and the birthdays and the Brigham city temple dedication it looked way cool. So first off, happy birthday Tasha and Rylee I hope you guys had fun birthdays and that you ate a lot of cake. Second off the horseback riding was probably really cool up in the mountains with all the leafs changing and everything. And President Packer dedicating the temple would have been way cool to hear. Anyways, this week was an awesome week for me. First off, on Friday we had a conference with 3 zones and President Anderson a seventy and the President of the Caribbean came and talked to us. He explained what are purpose is hear as missionaries, he told us that our purpose is to help people gain faith by teaching and letting the spirit touch their hearts. Every time the spirit touches someones heart their faith grows, we need to help them get to the point that they have enough faith to repent. When they change their old habits and start living the commandments of God then they are ready for baptism, after baptism they receive the Holy Ghost and then they need to endure to the end. So basically all of that starts with us bringing the spirit to the lessons. So then we talked about all the things that we can do to have the spirit with us and to be able to touch their hearts. And one of the most important things is to have a sincere interest for the people and a true love for them. And a desire to help them have the gospel in their lives. Also he talked about how we need to study hard so we can know all of the doctrine and then teach it in a way that permits the Spirit to touch their hearts. So I definitely learned a lot there at the conference and it was an awesome experience. Then yesterday we had a district conference here in Barahona. Basically it is stake conference, but there isnt a stake here, there is a district so its called district conference. And President Dominguez of the area seventy was there and he gave an awesome talk about charity and how we need to have charity and how the members need to support their leaders and work to have a stake here in Barahona. He told everybody if they pray for a patriarch then a stake will come so that got everybody really excited. He told them of all the blessings that will come when they have a stake here in Barahona, so that is what we are working for. Also, we have new investigator that is progressing a lot, he is 30 years old has a nice family and is really well off financially. Yesterday, all of his friends went to the beach and he told them no, that he wasnt going to go because he had a commitment with us. So we got to his house and we sat down and started teaching him the plan of salvation. He had read the pamphlet and had a lot of questions, well it came down to us explaining the atonement. I explained to him that it is like if he has a kid and his kid really wants to buy a bike and the bike costs 500 pesos so he tells his kid, look you need to work and save up and then we can go and buy the bike. So the kid starts working and working for a couple months and he comes to his dad and say dad I have been working all this time and I only have earned 100 pesos. And the dad says well son give me those 100 pesos and because off all that you have done i will pay for the rest of the bike. I explained that is the same as the atonement, that we arent perfect and that we cant make it back into the presence of God without the help of Jesus Christ and the atonement. And the spirit was super strong and it just clicked in his head and he asked us and when can i accept this atonement? what do I need to do? And those are probably the best words that you can hear when you are a missionary and we explained that he needs to start living the commandments of God and get baptized. He told us that he wants to get baptized but that he wants to be sure before he does anything and we talked to him about faith and how his faith will grow as he continues to learn and let the spirit work in him. So the lesson ended up lasting almost 2 hours but it was probably one of the coolest lessons that i have ever had on my mission and he is one of the coolest guys that i have met. So i hope the Spirit will keep working on him and that he will accept the gospel in his life. So all and all life is still going great i am just loving being out here on the mission, it is one of the greatest times that i have had to learn and to help others. I hope i can keep learning more and keep helping others more and more everyday. Anyways family I hope you all are doing good and having fun. I love ya all and hope you have a good week.

Elder Wadman