Cowboy Philosophy

Dear family,

Hey! This week was interesting. I have not experienced any adverse effects from my illness since last week, but a couple other Elders have had a similar bug. I am fine! Believe it or not, my moving around was not complete, and we moved down to Linden this week, so we don't gotta commute anymore. We also had Pagwah this week, a Hindu holiday where everybody throws water and colored powder at you. It was so fun! We found some pretty cool people this week. We had people at church and they really liked it. Unfortunately, our baptism didn't go through because of a lot of issues, so we hope that we can get that for next week. We have been doing a lot of finding, and I realized something about retention. Those investigators who are strong study the Book of Mormon. There are investigators who read, but then can't tell us anything they read. That doesn't help their testimony, but they agree to baptism anyways. Elder Kelley and I have made a goal to teach out of and help others really understand the importance of the Book of Mormon. My studies are great. The New Testament is great. I love the Savior, and I can feel my testimony of the atonement grow every time I teach about it. This week we got a call from the other Elders in Linden and they gave us a referral for a cool family. We went to the Market, where he works, and started talking to him. He seemed pretty cool, and we set up an appointment to teach his family. We had a really good first lesson and set up another appointment. After teaching the first half of the Plan of Salvation they told us they had a family that they wanted us to visit. We found out that the oldest son in the family was jumped a few days ago and brutally beaten by a couple thugs, and both of his legs were broken. We taught them about the atonement and how all their losses would be made up in Christ. The Spirit was very strong and we are going back to teach them this week. When we asked when we could come back, one of the guys there said "Anytime! You are welcome here anytime!" We now have 2 cool and extremely humble families to teach. That about wraps up our week. It is so cool that Sister Gauthier knows Elder Kelley. He is such a fun little guy. We work well together. I hope everybody has a great week. As for my address, don't worry about that yet, I might go back to Guadeloupe at the start of April so, I will keep you posted about that. I LOVE YOU GUYS!

Lots of love

Elder Ison

PS. Thank you Grandma and grandpa for writing me!

PPS. I am going to write you a HUGE letter, Sister Ison.