February 5, 2001

Dear Family,

Hey hey! Alive and well out here. And you? Hope everything's doing great. Elder Alvey went to Valencia today this morning and I've been waiting for him to get back - with Pouch so that this letter, would be a week in advance, but it's 4:00 already and no sign of him, so I figured that I'd better get writing.

So . . . here I am . . .

This week was pretty good - we almost made the mission goal of 30 charlas a week (per companionship) with 26, but still a little bummy because we got 30 two weeks ago easily. But something great did happen - we had a baptism! It was kind of a surprise. See, the husband of a new convert has been receiving visits from the missionaries ever since she started listening, about 8 months ago. And ever since the first time they walked in, he's been the best of friends with them but always tried to bible bash everything they said. But she gets baptized and since then has been trying to get him to accept this doctrine just by fighting, arguing with him - which is the wrong way. And since the missionaries love the family so much they just kept passing by and passing by trying to bible bash him back, until Elder Alvey shows up. And then I show up and then suddenly he (John) gets a sickness called "dengue" and his blood platelet count drops to 13. Afer a week he recovers and we hope that he's been humbled, so we begin to pass by with the end of finding out if he's ready to receive the charlas again. He agrees and we teach him all the charlas but we're still not that convinced that he's been humbled to the point of conversion. Elder Alvey did mention to me, though, that he had changed a lot. So it turns out that ever since his recovery he had decided to get baptized! But . . . he still had a hard time believing in Jose Smith and the Book of Mormon 100% until one day we're eating lunch in their house and he mentioned a few things that really make us feel that he had gained a testimony of these things. So we set up a pre-baptism interview with him and our Zone Leader and he passes with flying colors. Thus the baptism! He's going to be a great leader. Well, that's pretty much it, besides the drunk guy who did a backwards somersault for us one night! Love you all!

Elder Onken