Boca Chica 5 - "Vale la Pena"

Boca Chica 5- Vale la Pena (It's worth the pain) 

Como le van amigos!!!

Hey everybody hope everything is going well and you're all enjoying your families during this time of the year cause Christmas time really is a time for family and celebration. Everything down here in the DR is going great. It's actually starting to cool down a lot more. It's about 81 during the day and like 78 during the night. The people down here are busting out huge jackets and pants and everything like it's gonna snow 12 inches. But yeah, everything is going really really well.
 

 

After a long day of service

       First off, something super awesome is gonna happen in 12 days if everything goes as planned!!! We have an investigator named Elisa that has a baptismal date for the 20th of December and she's doing super well!! She's coming to church every Sunday, reading in the Book of Mormon, and making the changes she needs to be baptized which is awesome. She's doing super well and her baptisimal interview is THIS saturday so needless to say I'm stoked for her. She's changed a ton. At first, when we were teaching her, she didn't talk at all. She just kind of responded to our questions with one word answers cause she's super shy. But now, she's questioning things, making lots of friends in the Church, and she's just doing so awesome. 

 

Beautiful sunrise over the bay

But we have a lot of other wonderful people we're teaching. We have a family with three kids that we're teaching right now!! The mother is a superstar and she's already read everything we've left with her.  She comes to church and she's just doing everything she needs to as well as her kids. But her husband doesn't want anything to do with the "Mormónes" but it's all good. But she's progressing fast and she wants baptism really, really bad. We just gotta make sure she's ready first and really wants this for her and her kids for the right reasons. 

Everything else is going great too. My Spanish is getting there and I can actually talk on the phone now which is pretty sweet. I can say almost everything I want to. I just gotta keep the grammar and vocab coming but I'm doing well.  I have a goal to be fluent by 4 months so we'll see how that rolls out - hahaha.

But the message I really want to share with everybody today is that this Gospel is worth the pain or -"este evangelio vale la pena". Sometimes, we have to sacrifice for God. Sometimes, we have to do things that are hard and that seem impossible or near impossible at first. But if we really put our lives in God's hands, God can do things with us that seem crazy. He can help us more than anyone. He knows us more than we know ourselves. and if we turn in our will and accept His, we'll be happy no matter what life brings us. Because He will bless us more than we could ever imagine when we're doing what He wants us to do. 

Anyways, hope all is well and that everyone is safe and happy. I'm doing good down here don't worry about me. And if you're ever having a bad day, just say to yourself "At least I'm not a dog in the Dominican Republic." ......Just trust me, there's nothing worse than being a dog down here. So there's that.

Love,

Elder J. Taylor Graff