Greeting from Encanto!

Greetings again from Encanto!

The streets here glitter. There's so much glass from broken beer bottles that sometimes the sun catches it just right and it's all shiny and pretty. But that's life in the ghetto.

Speaking of life in the ghetto, one of our investigators is super duper poor because her husband got sent back to Mexico and she still has to take care of her kids and she didn't have a job for a long time. So we went over to her house and discovered that it was filled with cucarachas! And this was in the middle of the day. I can't imagine what it must be like when the come out at night. I felt really sorry for her and it was a very humbling experience. You could tell that she was very embarrassed about her living conditions but that she just didn't have any way to fix it immediately. I felt sorry for her kids too. I'm very thankful that God has always blessed me with enough to get by and that I've never had to live in a house filled with cucarachas. Living here is really giving me an appreciation for the things I have.

In other exciting news, a few weeks back, we ran into an interesting guy named Moises that I forgot to tell you guys about. We talked to him about our Church the first time we met him and he seemed fairly interested, but he told us some really weird stuff. Still, we came back again cause he seemed interested and he told us even more weird stuff about how he thinks the government's out to get him and how they drive by in black cars to threaten him. He also told us about how his family's out to get him. After a while of this, we realized we were talking with a paranoid schizophrenic! Yay! It reminded Elder Chipman of A Beautiful Mind because he seemed fairly smart and he had memorized our phone number but he was craaaaaaaaaazy.

In more spiritual news, we had a baptism this past Saturday. We baptized two sisters and the son of one of the sisters. It was really great to see them get baptized, because we were worried about them the week before. We prayed a lot about them and went over to their house to see what was going on. Nobody answered and we started walking away. Just as we were about to leave, we got a call on our phone from one of the sisters. They invited us in and everything went well. The member who was with us that night said he had just finished saying a prayer in his heart when we got the phone call. I love members!

Overall, I'm slowly getting more used to things. My Spanish is improving a lot. I really do believe I have received the Gift of Tongues to be able to speak this well barely three weeks into my mission. The first few weeks have been a lot of adjustments, but it's slowly settling down. We had Zone Conference recently and Pres. Beck talked to the trainers and trainees about cognitive dissonance, which was weird because I'd had those words running through my mind the past few days. It strengthened my testimony that he really is called of God to receive revelation about me personally, because each time I talk to him he seems to offer very pertinent personal advice.

In other news, Pres. Beck recently put the kibosh on EFY music, which is good because I never liked it anyways. Now it's just hymns and Motab, which I like because it makes it easy to feel the Spirit and there's not a lot of wiggle room for less obedient missionaries. I've been trying not to sing non-approved songs either because Pres. Beck asked us not to, but it's really difficult because hymns do not have catchy hooks or choruses. Mostly I've just been singing them inside my head, which is an improvement. Today I couldn't get the Rake's Song by the Decemberists out of my head during weekly planning.

Anyways, that's about all I have time for this week. Sorry this is late in getting to you guys. MLK Day screwed up our planning. Expect another letter Monday as usual. Thanks to everyone who writes me. I try to respond to letters when I can, but P-days are pretty busy so normally it takes a few weeks.

Love,

Elder Grasley

P.S. We have two more people preparing to get baptized this Saturday. Their names are Marta and Kelsey. We're very excited for them!