Working hard and having fun in Texas

Well the week is gone and once again I find myself in the library, crazy. Well it’s been a fun week. It always is but this week I feel like I was laughing a lot. Let me just say drunk people are funny. They try to tell you something and then they think that you didn’t get it so they tell you like 4 more times, haha it’s great. We had this funny kinda older man talking to us (Mexican cowboy, hat, boots and all) and he is just chatting away tell us how he is a sinner and that it’s because of the beer he was holding but he knew God loved him. It was really funny and he kept getting closer to us and almost poking me, (but he was a nice drunk guy, I thought he might hug me). It was really funny. The only problem is that it takes a lot of our time and with someone like that they don’t really remember us the next time we see them. But one day we will see. It was good practice for my Spanish. Oh and my Spanish is coming along. I can understand a lot and can make up the rest but yeah it’s coming little by little. I’ll get it before I’m done I’m sure. It’s really fun to be able to talk to people who can speak Spanish. It just blows my mind that when we get done with a lesson me and Elder S* will be talking a little about what happened and then I’ll suddenly realize that the lesson was all in Spanish! It sounds funny but it’s so cool to be able to retell a story in English that you heard in Spanish. It blows my mind.

We’ve been really trying to do the work around here that will help our branch grow. It’s been hard just because there are so many people that work all the time. We had a member get a little discouraged this past week and he wanted to switch to an English ward because there are more people. That would have been so bad. I told him how much his example and his priesthood mattered and how important him and his family were to the branch and he decided to give it another try!! It was so great to see them in church and to see his faith in the Lord. I know that it will help him and he will be blessed for going.

We had some crazy stuff happen. We found that there is a member family in the ward that have a little boy that isn’t baptized and he is 9. That means that we get to  teach him and take him through all of the things. We hope to teach him this week and do the baptism between sessions at conference. Oh that would be so cool. We had been a little nervous because when we talked to his mom she said that he didn’t really want to be baptized and all this stuff so we had a fast and went and taught the family a lesson about the importance of the Spirit and how it helps us in our lives to have a direction and we talked about how it was through baptism that we get the gift of the Holy Ghost and this boy looks at his mom and says “When can I get baptized?” and she was like “When would you like?” He said “I don’t know” and then Elder S* said “We could do it next Saturday if you want” and he said “YES!” It was so cool. It’s been crazy trying to get everything figured out because we have a lot to cover but we will see. We are trying to get his dad ready so he could baptize his son but if not him then I will do it. Haha I was so happy it was crazy.

 I hope you all are reading and saying your prayers. We believe in the Bible and we know it to be the word of God. It kinda takes the fire away from someone when they are trying to tell us things from the Bible that they think we don’t know and we say “No we do believe that but because of the Book of Mormon we know more…” It’s been funny to me. Read the scriptures and you will not be confused. If you ask God, He will help you see the truth but it takes work on our part. We are so blessed to have both books. We have the whole picture. I really love them both and I hope you can come closer to them as well.

I love you all and hope all is well.

Love,

Elder Birks