the pictures of the bike trip made my realy home sick. i wish i could have done it. thanks for the picture of the sign. that made my day. ill see if the mission president will give my my vacation time around the bike trip next year.things are well here. we baptised juan yesturday. his wife has been a member for a few months but he tried to avoid the church for a while and then finaly started going to church. and got baptised. we have a family home evening withe a family that we are teachinga and the bishiops family tonight. they are a cool family that we found my first week here and we have high hopes. and we have a bunch of other realy cool investigators. optomism and hard work are the secrets to happyness, we are tachng this one lady that smoked 2 packes of cigarets a day. we set daily gaols with her to quit in a week. the idea came into my head to tell her that every morning she should pray and tell heavenly father her goal, and ask for stregth, pray every time that she felt tempted and every night report to heavenly father how it went, giving thanks for the help and talking about what she can do better. i started doing that with my goals. not to quit smoking but with my goals. its a cool experienc telling heavenly father my goals and then reporting every night.well love you mom.ben

reading your letters always make me happy and give me animo. my companion has less time then me and is from california, and so we are both learning spanish. but my new area is in the stake of mirador. its awsome. it used to be 2 areas but they closed one, so we have a huge area, and the past few missionaries wernt hard workers so there are alot of people prepared, waiting for us. the members are awsome. so many of them ore converts of 2 or 3 years that share the gospel with every one. my companion was a swimmer. a spriter. we get along and work hard together. i even got him to run with me in the mornings.we found this cool family that came to church, they were waiting for us when we passed for them. that is the first time that has happened, usualy we have to wake them up. we are going to put a baptismal date this week. we are excited, and this dad named jaun, his whole family is baptised except him and hes getting baptiesed saturday.things are great here. keep me updated on the olimpics. we should go in 4 years.love you mom.

the pictures from your blog are so cool. it makes me miss home and free time to go play, but this is way better. in a few hours im goingto gaudalajara, mirador, im going as senor companion. im excited. a little nervous. im not sure if my spanish is good enough. congragulate sam for the open water swim. i cant imagine the bike trip happening and me not going. i would love to ride a bike, but no one in our mission has bikes. i think most of mexico is on foot.im sad to leave. we had a baptism sunday and one saturday. then sunday we went to visit converts. it was kind of sad. but ive been asking the lord to prepare a family in my next area, i have never baptised a family and i want to baptise them before i finish a year so that i can see their sealing before i go home. that is my goal.its funny that some one asked how it was teachiung all those cathlics. they are the best to teach, you just need to know how to do it. if your to direct they think that we are insulting them and their ancestors. so you have to be sneakier like ammon with king lamoni. if people ask us if we beleive in the virgin of talpa, we say that we beleive in the virgin mary and we respect her alot. but we dont worship her. and if we invite them to get baptised and they say that they are already baptised, we say "when you were baptised you received a name right? the father said i baptise you with this name..... but this baptism is different. it wont take away your other baptism, it will just take away your sins and open the door to live with god after this life"well i love you, next week ill let you know how my new area is.loveben