08-18-14

 MACARENA IS GETTING MARRIED!!!!!!!!  :) 

 This is our ZONE!

 Singing the Army of Helaman

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MACARENA IS GETTING MARRIED!!!!!!!!  :) Ha-ha, she and Sebastian are going to get married on the 19th of September!  We are planning their baptism now, :)  Our hope is that they can get married on the 19th and baptized together on Sunday!  Hopefully things go well for Sebastian, he has two big barriers, he is smoking, and he works on a farm... milking cows, so he is almost never free on Sundays.  We are hoping that he can make it to church a few more times in order to make it to their goal of baptism.  We are so thankful for the opportunity we have had to be a part of this with them.  Thursday we were in our house studying language when the phone rang. It was an unknown number so I answered it with a lively, "Hola! buenas tardes, somos los misioneros!" and on the other end I heard an overly excited Macarena!  She told me she was at the Court House and that if we could get there in 10 minutes, we could sign as witnesses to her wedding and she could pick a date for her wedding. :) Man that was MUSIC TO MY EARS!  She has already come 3 Sundays in a row and is learning VERY quickly.  She doesn’t smoke or drink and already has the goal to get married in the temple!  Ha-ha. :)  We are very excited for her!  Keep Sebastian in your prayers, he wants to stop smoking, but it looks like it will be hard for him to make it to the church.  He has yet to come to a sacrament meeting, so we need some divine help to make things happen. :)  

I’m pretty excited for the Anderson s to get here!  President says that couple missionaries are only in the MTC for 5 days, so he guesses that they will be getting here right before I leave! Hopefully in time to go through the temple with me the day before I leave! :)  President and I were talking about them and he wants to know if either of them have medical knowledge, I told him I’d ask you guys today.  And did Brother Anderson serve a mission? Was it Spanish speaking?  :)  I’d love to get an email from Vicki Jo!  Ha-ha.

Things are going great with my comp and I! He is a champ and came pre trained.  We have great lessons and he is really driven by the spirit!  I love working with him!

Chelsea told me how things are going for her in Flag and sounds like she is being pretty blessed if you ask me. :)  Having the time of her life and living it up!  Hope JJ is doing ok... sure she is taking a "Sucker Punch" to this transition.   Keep your hearts full of love because our family can’t be separated by any matter of miles! :)

Love you all so much!

Elder Reay

08-11-14

 Baptimal interviews in San Ramon.

Popcorn poping in Florida!

 Blooper. jaja.  Te amo  mama, espero que tengas un buen dia hoy.  Sé que va a ser muy dificil para ti mañana!  Tienes que ayudar a mi hermanita mudarse! jaja.  Gracias por todo lo que haces para  mi.  realmente te amo con todo!

Tu hijo,

Elder Reay

Burger king... after more than two years. haha. :)  A pday treat

 

I have emailed hermana White for the last few weeks, she baptized this brother two years ago and  i am helping them get back in touch. :) Pretty fun. :)

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This week went really well!  We have seen many miracles!  The most touching was the sister Suarez that made it to church yesterday!  She is 80 years old and was one of the first members to be baptized here in Florida.  We visited her after receiving the prompting to do so on Friday.  We showed up to her house with a friend of the family that is a member and when Sister Suarez´s daughter opened the door (Also a less active member) she asked, "Oh, hello, what are you guys doing here?"  And the brother that was accompanying us replied, "The missionaries asked me who we should visit and I told them that I wanted to come and see YOU and you mother... I told them that it has been a long time since I’ve seen you in church and wanted to visit you to see how you have been" and with that said, we were in the door. :)  They haven’t gone to church in about a year or a year and a half now due to one reason or another and lately it has been just the cold mornings.  As the lesson unfolded, my comp and I shared some great scriptures and then began to ask some inspired questions... Let me tell you.  I have gained such a testimony on Inspired questioning... it is amazing to hear the answers that come from our investigators and less actives.  Cloudia (The daughter of sister suarez) answered a few of our questions and then broke down in tears as she began to realize how powerful her OWN testimony was about church attendance and as she began to realize that that testimony was being waited by the years of excuses.  She cried as she thanked us and Brother Rodriguez for thinking of her and her mother and for our surprise visit.  :)  They both came to church yesterday and it was absolutely beautiful.  One of the most amazing things about the lesson was that as I listened to Sister Suarez´s conversion story and all the stories she has acquired over the years, I sat in awe as I saw the image of Sister Suarez melt into what seemed to be a childhood memory of my Grandma Reay.  She seems to have the same face, the same manner of speech and it was amazing to feel that closeness to my Grandma.  As I listened to her, I could remember one visit we made to Grandma Reay’s apartment (Or old folks home... not sure) and I remember Uncle Joe showing up as well and I remember the grandfather clock with the little mouse sitting on the counter weight.  

We have some great investigators coming to church!  Macarena has all the paperwork for the wedding and we will be finishing up everything this week hopefully.  Axel and his mother are now taking the lessons and WOW they are just blown away by the spirit.  We got to know Axel first and invited him to be baptized, for the 30th (Hopefully there will be a baptism over there in Arizona the same day!) and then got to know the mother yesterday.  She has accepted baptism for the same day and we are so super excited!!!

Love you all!

Elder Reay

08-04-14

This is me right after verifying with the sisters in San ramon by cell phone and right before verifying with the zone leaders that live with us.

This is the shirt I got in my last area "Rocha" has all our names on the back.

Yeah... i know i was trying to flex... and haha, you can see it´s been hard to do work outs here. haha. :)  But the main focus of the photo is the shirt!  haha.  Elder Chumpitaz, our zone leader in Rocha designed shirts before the  mission, so he designed it for us and we had a members son in my area that could print them off. :)  Ended  up turning out great!

 

This is our house, in the left corner (See my comp?) and that is the church... ten steps away. :)

 

 

Letter:
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Wow... to be honest, it’s been a while since one of your letters has brought me to tears... but that one hit me right square in the heart!  :)  I stand amazed at how wonderful my family is in the gospel... there is absolutely NOTHING that is more valuable to me.  Thank you so much for being so worthy of the Holy Ghost and for following his promptings.  I am totally reading that to my comp.  I love hearing about your spiritual experiences so much!!! It has been a great week here in Uruguay.  WE HAVE MIRACLES ON THE WAY!!!! Keep Macarena and Sebastian in your prayers!  :)  Macarena is going to be the first baptism for my comp and the first baptism in this area for the both of us.  She is progressing so beautifully!  Yesterday we had one of the most beautiful lessons with her.  We invited our ward mission leader and his future wife to join us in the lesson.  Our WML is a returned missionary and the lesson was FILED by the spirit!  Promises and blessings pouring out from my mouth as well as my companions, coupled with powerful testimonies of Richard and Noelia.  Macarena has been investigating the church for years now but hasn’t ever been baptized because she has been living with her boyfriend.  She wants to be baptized so badly and she is now on track to achieve it!  She has two young boys, one age 7 and one age 3.  Yesterday’s charla ended with strong invitations and goal setting so that she understands the next steps.  She seemed a little worried that things wouldn’t go as smoothly as we promised, but trusted us and decided to talk to Sebastian last night... he has never shown desires to get married.  We were praying for her all last night and all this morning.  We started the day as usual with leadership meetings and p-day.  When we happened to find Sebastian in the busy part of town!  We stopped and talked to him for a bit, and he BLEW us a way when he said that they had recently come out of the Government building with ALL the paperwork necessary to get married!!!  Macarena was around the corner and we talked to them both as we congratulated them and made sure everything was good for the charla tomorrow and our Family Home Evening.  Wednesday they should be "Taking out a date" for marriage and we are so STOKED!!! :)

Love you all!!

Elder Reay