February 2, 2011

Hey mom!

Good to hear from you this week! Things have been great here despite the bad weather but we're trying to get through it all. It's been really snowy and rainy and it's been icing the sidewalks so it becomes really hard walk but we're doing the best we can. I hope your week has been better! I heard the weather has been good there from dad. That's good to hear that you are enjoying good weather back at home. Like I've mentioned many times before, I miss the San Diego weather! It will be something I'll be thankful for when I'm finally back. Can you believe that it's just 26 days till it's only one more year till I come back home?! Time really does fly by when you're lost in the work. We've been really busy lately!

Julia our investigator will be baptized this Sunday! I will be baptizing her! Whew! It'll be my first actually doing the baptism here on the mission. I'm excited/nervous just because it will be my first but it should go well. I already had the opportunity to baptize a lot before my mission. We're really excited for her baptism. Other than that we received 4 new investigators in the last 5 days! They are all pretty solid!! We will continue to teach them and hopefully they will be baptized in a short while. They each have their different situations and questions about the gospel but we hope to work with them to help them anyway we can so they can enter the waters of baptism sooner or later. It's been a busy week just trying to get to everyone and teach them and also battling the weather. It's tough but just like every week we just keep going and tackle each day with a positive attitude. Days go much better and time goes by faster when we do. It's been great working here in Olmstead. The Ward is really supportive of us and help us a lot with work and they feed us lots! Haha. I hope to enjoy being in the English program as much as I can before I go back to the ASL program.

Thanks again mom for e-mailing me this week. I hope the rest of the week continues to go well and the good weather continues too! We hope the bad weather here will let up soon. It's a struggle but we're getting through. The mission has been really fun so far and I just continue to experience many great and new things. This will be a time I will never forget. Thanks mom for helping me get to this point. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have dad and you to support me. I miss you and love you so much! Stay safe and I'll talk to you again next week!

Love always,
Your son Elder Derrick Joseph Castro