all around a good birthday

it was my birthday this week howday hay. the sixth of febuary i celebrated my 24th birthday and it was really a blessing and a good day. i threw my own dang party. i bought my cake, i bought really nice quesadillas from the best quesadilla place i know of. and i shared my cake with the guys from san pedro cuz they are the bomb and we had to go over there for an interview. they had two really special baptisms this week and we got to do the interviews and man it is really cool to see how the gospel changes peoples lives. one unusual little detail. this lady, maria, from san pedro. she drunk alot a lot of cofee. she learned about the word of wisdom and stopped drinking coffee entirely and read the pamphlet a lot and made other changes in her life like eating meat sparingly and eating more fruits and vegetables. one month later, she had lost 7 kilos! which i think is like 15 pounds. she´s not a very large woman either, she has like a normal mexican mom bod. and she lost 15 pounds! from keeping the commandments! you can do it too!

anyway my brithday, the most memorable part was one appointment that we went to that day. we talked to christofer and cindy, a wonderful couple that has very complicated reasons for not being able to get married just yet. and cindy bore her testimony to us and told us that she wants to get baptized. she isn´t sure about the timeframe because of needing to get married before getting baptized, but she said that she is going to get baptized by her birthday, which is in august. that is a long way a way, and we are going to focus on other investigators who can progress a little more quickly. but her testimony and the things she said really touched me. her life is better becuase of the things we´ve told her, she has felt something beautiful and wants to follow it. her testimony that she bore was the best birthday gift. 

okay! in a week we are going to have cambios, it´s very likely that i´ll go to another area to finish my mission, and elder stevenson will stay her with some other guy, latino most likely. he is nervous about it. but he´ll be alright.  i was just thinking yesterday. i really love elder stevenson. i probably love him more than any other comp i´ve had. he is soooo humble. soo pure. so gentle and kind. i love listening to him talk man. he is funny and pure. 

yeah but i feel good about cambios honestly. I¨VE BEEN HERE FOREVER. i love this place, chaves. i feel like chaves is a good symbol. it´s a metaphor for my mission. it´s ghetto as heack and i´m alone but everyone is really nice to me. there are dogs everywhere. 

OH MAN elder stevenson is the dog boss. he told me when he got here, "i´m pretty good with dogs" and i was like, "yeah but you haven´t met these dogs kid." and over and over elder stevenson has suprised me by being a total dog whisperer. Dogs love this kid. He just touches them and then they are his forever. dogos following us in the streets, they see him coming and they run to his feet and follow him everywhere. he gives them names and caracters. sometimes they follow us REALLY far. like one dog has followed us to the interstate man. he probably walked with us like 3 miles that day. yeah elder stevenson is really good with dogs. 

i´m also getting kind of tired of monopoly. it´s fun to goof with the guys and stuff but they want to play monopoly way more than i do. like, i get tired after a while. i´ll probably take a monopoly vacation after this area, swear myself off monopoly for at least a year. 

this will be a good week i think.

elder grilliot