Last transfer is on its way (email dated 06/29/2010)

Bon Dia,

Another transfer has begun and it just so happens to be my last one here in San Nicolas and also as a full time missionary. Its a great area to be in though for my last transfer. Right now were starting to see some investigators that are progressing quite well but there's always room for new investigators as a missionary.

Anyhow lets answer the questions first like who's my new companion and where he's from right? Well, my new companion is Elder Wilkes from Boise, Idaho and is an old guy in the mission like myself. He has one transfer less than me and will be getting home in September. We get along very well and will have a great transfer here in what we like to call Zion AKA 'San Nicolaas"

Also basicaly they've taken all the missionary's out of Aruba Curacao and Bonaire. Now there are only 6 of us with 4 Elders here in Aruba and 2 in Curacao and thats it. Yup its sort of lonely out here in the islands, missionary wise, but i really love it personaly. I'm pretty sure we have the best area in the world. Its now official that we are part of the Santa Domingo Dominican Republic East Mission. We made the change last wednesday and our new President has already come down to interview us and apply his new rules and ideas for the ABC islands. His name is President Antivilo and he's from Chile and his wife is from Utah. I guess they met in college as he went to Utah State and met her. Really i'm going to miss any effects from the change because i'll be leaving in about 5 weeks. But its cool to be able to experience this little change for a little bit at least.

This past week we did start to teach a new investigator named Leonor who's a friend from a member in the branch. She's from Venezuela and has been coming to our English class that we've been teaching here in San nicolas seeing how everyone needs to learn English now a day. It interesting to now be teaching others languages instead of me having to learn from them. Anyhow Leonor is really nice and even came to church with her friend this past sunday. I hope she had a good experience and i'm sure we'll find out today at English class when she comes and we teach her afteward. What is really going to help is that her friend is a recent convert and is a little ball of fire.

Candy, who is the Domincan that we found after the rare rain strom here in Aruba is doing good and learning a lot every day. This past sunday they changed her schedule and she was able to come to church in the morning which makes 2 sundays in a row. She's really soaking things in also and made good friends with a member thats also from Santo Domingo. We taught candy over at her house and she had a great experience as we watched the restoration video. Now we basicaly need to get her understanding up and finish teaching the lessons and she'll be good for the 17th to be baptized.

So as for the report from Aruba things are going great and life is great. thanks for the prayers and i love you all.

Elder Lopez

The last transfer begins (email dated 06/22/2010)

Hey,

What an intersting last week we had here in San Nicolas. Well first off we'll start with the disapointing news about Keith and AnaMilena's baptismal date. We had to drop it because as of right now they weren't 100% ready for the baptism because of tithing. They are in a tough situation finacially and said they really arent willing to pay full tithing all the time because they just don't know if they'll be able to meet ends meet and the end of the month if they pay a full tithe. Right now AnaMilena has to send part of their pention money home to colombia every month to help out her family and they just feel like its to hard right now to pay a full tithing. So they told us they'd like to suspend their date for right now. But they love us so much and they love the church so much that their not going to give up reading the BOM or coming to church! Really they are ready for baptism and this last appointment we had with them went great. We had left 1 Nephi for them to read about the Iron Rod and Lehi's vision but she got the reference mixed up and read from 3 Nephi 13 instead and it really hit home on her situation she's in. It basically says dont worry about tomorrow because God knows you have need and will prepare away, instead worry about today and do what the Lord has commanded us to do. She told us it really touched her a lot and made her think a lot about what she needs to do... so we still havent' lost Anamilena or Keith completely.Their still progressing, they just have to take a step of faith and test our Heavenly Father if he wont open the blessings up in abundance.

So then a day after AnaMilena had told us she was going to wait a little longer on her baptismal date we were out toking and we got soaked by a very rare rain here in Aruba. But we just kept on going and talking to everyone in our path because we knew that we were going to need to find some new good investigators now that our investigators are taking a little longer than we would like. So as we were going we talked to one lady as she was getting out of her car and told her we were from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and she just said no i'm in a hurry and have to go back to work. So we were like "OK" well we'll keep on going and did, when she stopped us for a second time before she left back to work and asked "what church did you say your from." so we told her again and she said "you know what, some one told me that God would send me some one at this hard time in my life and that we're in the last days." She continued to say " and your the first people of God that have approached me since and if you come over on saturday i'd listen to what you have to say." So we did just that and returned on saturday and had a wonderful first lesson with her and invited her to prepare to be baptized in the first lesson and she said i'd love to prepare and i feel like you are for real and i can trust in you. She than came to church on sunday and was touched so much by the testimony's there that it brought her to tears a couple of times. She really pulled a 180 since the first time we contacted her and she said " no, I'm busy". It really made me think and ponder on the way that the spirit can give us such a big change in our lives if we just let it work . She's really looking like shes' going to progress well and already said she's leaving smoking behind and getting ready for her baptismal date of the 18th of july... So the Lord really blessed us with an unforgetable experience right there and didn't stop. On Sunday the reilf society president stopped me at church and asked me how long it took to get some one baptized.... So i told her well usually at least around 3 weeks to see if their committed to come to church faithfully...and she continued to say well that will do.... So i was naturaly curious to why she had asked me that and asked her well can we help you out with someone to teach? Then she told me yes, and that her daughter had finally told her she wants to have the missionary lessons and be baptized. She was so happy because she's been waiting a long time to help her daughter become converted to the gospel and its now begining to happen. So were going to go over this week to see if she's for real and help her get on track!


Yeah some wonderful blessing right? I truly do love this work!

well i wrote fast and cant go back to check for mistakes for time sake so i hope you all understand the greatness of this week from what i've wrote so far.

Love you,

Elder Lopez

Ps. Thanks for your prayers and a keep them up!!

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This is from Bret's last transfer in Puerto Rico

A Quick 5 days (email dated 06/07/2010)

So it seems like a very short time since i've sent a letter because last weeks pday was on wednesday. But none the less many things happend in that little span of 5 days. It was a great week in church again seeing how in church we broke the San Nicolas record in attendance on sunday with a big 50 people in our little house of a church. It was awesome to see the place full to the back of the sacrament room. The smile on our branch presidents face was so big that i could see it from a mile away and he still hasn't taken it off till today. We do our laundry at his house and thats all he could talk about. He kept on saying how yesterday was San NIcolas history because they've never made it up to 50 people in church at one time in this little branch. We were happy because we had 4 of our investigators there also which we as missionary's love to see. Its a big jump from my first week here when we only had 17 people there in church.

AnaMilena who is our number one investigator right now even was able to come with her son Fitzgerald. He's the autistic son that i wrote about last time. Fitzgerald did a good job also and sat very calmly for the whole sacrament meeting that we had. Afterward he was a little frustrated though, so Anamilena had to take him home for the last 2 hours. We were just excited that he was able to come for the first time and be good for the first hour. We're hoping that he's able to little by little become acustomed to coming to church and one day be able to sit through the whole entire thing. Anamilena was excited though that he was even able to come and sit good for a full hour of church. We past by that same night to visit her and her husband keith to see what we could do to help Kieth be able to come also for the next week and he simple said i just need to wake up on time. So hopefully next week we have that whole family there. Its been a wonderful time teaching this family and the best part about it is that we're even able to "chapi" her yard, which is basicaly weeding with a hoe. Why do i say thats the best part... because afterward she always makes us this Colombian food called "Arepas". Mmmm good!

Also this past week we had another baseball game with the little kids after our lesson with Andrea, their grandma. We even had the littlest girl who didn't want to play be our anouncer on the side lines and anounce our names when we got up to bat. She really liked anouncing my name "Elder Lopez" when i would step up to bat. The little kids are just a ball of fun to play with. We also taught them to speak english with good words instead of the dirt words some of them had learned from other kids at school. We told them that if we heard any bad words we'd leave and wouldn't be able to play any more, so they all did good after that. Our lesson with Andrea, the grandma, also went well and we're looking forward to seeing her again this week to see if we can help her make it to church which is her big step she needs to make.

So i guess this would be a little interesting fact about what we're going to be doing with our Pday today. We took over an appartment from the sisters and they left it with some bright pink walls and today were going to paint it white to get rid of the pink walls. Elder Ellis and I really think its going to help our work for this next week. I mean its tough having to study the scriptures in a pink appartment. We also took down the Peach shades that they had put up to be able to put up some new shades that a member is making us. So yeah you could say that Elder Ellis and I are really transforming our area completely, even down to the missionary's apartment.

Well my time is running a little low so i'm going to go ahead and wrap this up now...

Chirst lives and loves us and we are very blessed to know His steps, so now lets just follow them. They may at times be hard but there definately worth the trouble to follow. Keep on keepin on back home!

Much love,

Elder Lopez

Aruba "Bo sa loke mi k mien"‏ (email dated 07/02/2010)

Hello back Home,

So this past week was a little longer because they moved our P-day to today which is Wednesday. Just imagine how bad we stink because of not being able to do our wash until today. I mean us missionary's sweet a lot being in the Caribbean sun all day, and not being able to wash your clothes on the normal Monday is a tough cookie to have to take. But none the less the week was another great one, especially seeing that we had 5 investigators, President Martineau, and President Antivilo ( Our new mission president from the DR) all in church on Sunday. So would you like to hear how all of these wonderful guest enjoyed their time in church and why they came? Of course you would, So i'll start with the 5 Investigators.

Starting with the least interested of all of them. Her name is Zoya and she's from Jamaica. She came to church because we called her on Sunday morning and gave her the invite to come and she excepted. But she only stayed for sacrament and then left because she was bored. She's 19 years old and really interesting because she's really honest to her word and she does what she say's she's going to do but the fact that Sacrament was 2 hours long she didn't really like. It was branch conference and she just didn't really take interest in any of the talks. But when we past by her house on monday she had a bunch of questions on praying and on the BOM so we were surprised about that. Anyways she still wants us to come by to teach her more about the book so we'll see what happens and if she likes next weeks sacrament meeting which will be fast sunday... At least it will only be 1 hour this time for sacrament meeting. but only time will tell.

We then had a daughter of a member there who is 11 years old but still not baptized. The one problem there is that the Mom is not a member of the church and is making it hard to teach her and to let her come to church every Sunday.So with her its just a time game.

Then we had a guy named Tom and his Wife Sixta came to church also. Tom is a really sharp guy and is about 72 years old but enjoying every moment we're with him and his wife. Tom is actually a really dedicated Mason but likes every thing we've taught so far and understands everything. He's already had some spiritual confirmation of to why we're there and also why he was in church. We talked about Temples in Sunday school and he asked why am i so attracted to that building (the Temple) and want to go in? We then went on to tell him that that would be because its a place where you make sacred covenants with the Lord for all eternity. It really sparked his interest and he's really looking forward to learning more and more about everything. Still though we haven't been able to find the right amount of time to teach him everything. Its safe to say though that he's progressing a lot. He's committed on reading, praying, and coming to church. So i believe he's going to go some places.

Now for Ana Milena who is personally my favorite investigator we have up until this point in time. She's been progressing so well and is gaining a really strong testimony. It all started when we went over the plan of salvation with her the first time and talked about her autistic child, Fitzgerald, and how he's saved already being completely innocent the way he is. Then to add to her testimony we went over to her house on Saturday with our mission president, President Martineau, and taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we touched the subject of baptism and the requirements for being baptized President let her know that her son would not need to be baptized because he's already got it made, and that now the Lord has put the path in her way that she might be able to be reunited with him again after this life in Heaven. Tears of joy filled Ana Milenas eye's as she listened to the simple truth of baptism and its proper form and purpose. She really at that moment took a personal choice that she would do whatever is necessary to be able to reach the waters of baptism for her son's sake. Than as she was able to come to church on Sunday she learned and felt like she never had before. She told us she was surprised that we didn't have more members than we did because she felt so good about it she thought there would be a lot of people there. I agreed with her thought and some times ask myself the same question but the simple truth is that the enemy is good at his work and blinding the world from real joy and happiness. The next day, Monday, we past by again to her house and taught the word of wisdom so that she would be able to get on track for baptism and she said the only thing she has to get over is the coffee but is more than willing to leave it behind. Ana Milena is truly a wonderful person and its just a matter of time before she can get in the water i believe. Its great too because she's the leader and her husband Keith is just right there with her but a little slower to understand things. He's a good guy though and will support his wife in her decision and help out also because their in it together. Now we just need to get Fitzgerald accustomed to the church so that they both can attend together at the same time instead of one staying home to watch over Fitzgerald. I got faith all will work out though.So those are the investigators we're working with that are going places as for now.

But that's not all the news for the week. We're teaching one family that has a lot of little kids with neighbor friends that play baseball out in the front yard all the time. So yes we did go and play ball with them! it was a blast to! My team was wining and it was all going good until we hit all the balls over the fence into the neighbors yard and she got mad and came out and chastised us in papiamento which was pretty funny. Unfortunately we had to call the game for lack of tennis balls, but i'm sure we'll be back on for next week. So I'll get you better up dated on next weeks highlights with the little street baseball.

Until then much love,
Elder Lopez