September 1, 2010

Hey mom!

Great to finally hear from you! I see you have been really busy in the last week and that's good!

It's good to see that Auntie and the kids are here now in the states! Good for them. When I saw the pictures you sent me all I could do was smile to see that they are finally here after such a long time wait. That's good. :) Seems like you all had a good time exploring around SLC! That's good they finally got to see all the things they would only see at conference time in person. Truly the good work of the Lord.

So this weekend is the big weekend you'll be taking Nicki to Idaho. That's also truly amazing. That's good for her that she was able to attain a scholarship so she can have schooling covered for her for awhile. I know she will do well there and make you and dad proud. The Lord has truly blessed her with an opportunity to go further her education where she desires to be. Good for her. Tell her I love her and good luck.

I really enjoyed seeing the pictures from EJ and Adelle's wedding. That looked like it was tons of fun. It looks like you all enjoyed yourself and I'm sorry that I missed it. But it was great to see that you captured some moments from the event. :) And seeing the rehearsal party at the house made me miss home but I know we will continue to host lots of parties so there will be a lot more to come that I'll be there to enjoy. :)

That's really cool that you challenged the girls to read the Book of Mormon and hear the audio too. I think that will really help them listen and understand more about the Book of Mormon. We're trying to get an audio version too so we can play it in the apartment on Preparation days and stuff. It would be good to hear and it would be a different experience listening to it. Hope that goes well. Danielle e-mailed me about it and she seemed very excited about it. But she is always an active reader and that's good. I'm becoming one myself as well. I've been really interested in reading the gospel library and have been going through "Our Heritage." It's really good so far and it is giving me more insight into the early days of the Restoration and such. It's a good read.

Nothing much has changed here. I voice interpreted last Sacrament meeting on Sunday. It went fairly well. I think I've really been stepping it up in terms of work because we have so much responsibility put onto us now. So hopefully I'll continue to trudge through it all and be able to do all this great work with the help of the Lord. I've been teaching this member, his name is Chung Wong. He's a great guy. A deaf Chinese man with Cerebral Palsy. I was teaching him last week and when the lesson was over her offered the closing prayer. In it he expressed  his love for me for teaching him about the gospel. Tears came to my eyes because I was caught off guard not knowing he would say that. It's a tough task being in the ASL program because we don't see much success compared to the others but I love it here. The members appreciate the work and dedication we put into uplifting the deaf branch. At that point I knew that really it didn't matter if I had investigators, I have members here in the branch that love the gospel. They may not know it well but we're here for them so we can teach them, help them better understand it. I love this work. I love being a missionary. It's truly been a blessing to me.

We just keep going onward with the work. The weather hopefully will change soon. It's a new month and we're looking to keep the good work up. Elder Gervacio and I have been doing great work the last couple of weeks since Elder Evenson left. It's good because it really shows that with a little push and effort and hard work can go a long way. We even have 2 potential investigators now which is really good for us. Wish us luck with that.

Mom I miss you and I love you. Can't thank you enough for all the help you've given me leading up to this time. Thanks for all the support from home. I will continue to do this great work and make you proud. :)

Love always,
Your son and Elder Derrick Joseph Castro