opening your mouth

Hey, hows it going?

I guess I'll address the 2 paragraphs of my letter last week to let y'all know what happened with those people. Firstly with the referral in Benton City, we got to go over there tuesday night, and it did cost us on miles seeing as its just right outside of tricities but we had a good experience. The young lady we are referring to was apparently contemplating suicide, so we went over to assess the situation, which brings up a good lesson in referrals in the mission field. Don't count on the info in the referral to be completely true, but still be cautious. We went over and met Jessica. She is living with her mom 2 brothers and son in a trailer. About 3 months ago she got an infection in her leg, which left her unable to walk. She's been slowly recovering, and can now walk with some difficulty. She's also having trouble sleeping, and while she had experienced some depression in the past she seemed pretty positive when we met her. We got to know her some more, and talked about how Christ know what we feel, and he is always there for us to confide in and that faith in Christ will help her resolve her difficulties. All the while I was getting the prompting to give her a blessing of health. I kept on pushing it off and hoping for Elder Swenson to offer so I wouldn't have to. Finally I resolved to say it but even then had some trouble getting up the courage to ask. Finally I did and she accepted and I gave her a blessing in my not so great spanish and she felt peace. We left them with a prayer and called the assistants and said it would probably be okay to send the spanish sister missionaries there. There's a lesson we can learn here. It calls to mind Elder Hollands priesthood talk last conference.

"So what are some of the devil’s tactics in this contest when eternal life is at stake? Here again the experience in the Sacred Grove is instructive. Joseph recorded that in an effort to oppose all that lay ahead, Lucifer exerted “such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak.”¹

As President Boyd K. Packer taught this morning, Satan cannot directly take a life... But apparently his effort to stop the work will be reasonably well served if he can just bind the tongue of the faithful. Brethren, if that is the case, I am looking tonight for men young and old who care enough about this battle between good and evil to sign on and speak up..."

So that was a cool experience, hopefully she'll get better soon.

We had the funeral of Corina Santos this week, and we were asked to give the special musical number. It was kind of an interesting experience, to stand in front of a crowd of about 200 people, the majority Nonmembers from the Grandview-Sunnyside area, and sing I know that my redeemer lives, and I am a Child of God. But one of our Potential investigators, Adrian was there with his wife. We had found this guy outside his house one day. We sat there for like 15 minutes talking about his pitt bulls, and then how we were missionaries and what we do. He said we could come back, on the weekend, so we saw him at the funeral and tried sunday night, his wife said he was working and then said "but you're the guys from the funeral right? Come next Saturday afternoon and we'll be here." So sounds like are help at the funeral sparked some interest.

As far as the Santos family goes, they're doing good. We crashed their party Thursday night, David and Susanna had the family over, making carne asada so we got to talk to them a bit and see how they were doing.

Other news from this week, Eduardo Moved! We said bye to him on Wednesday. We also had Stake conference, It was really good. We started teaching Uciel Carrazco,

(Jordan, this is our rich Mexican) He lives on a hill outside of Grandview, with an excellent view of the valley from his back balcony. He's doing good, he has a good family and wants the best for them.

We visited Carlos, he's a former investigator, who has been taught everything like a year ago but didn't show up to his baptism, because he started having trials. He got new roommates and the one was talking about how he was catholic and he only prayed at the church, to which Carlos told him Catholics are hypocrites, that they worship graven images, and so on and so forth. In our heads we were thinking "Go Carlos!" But we're not there to say bad about other religions, so we kept silent, and as soon as the argument kind of slowed down, Elder Swenson cut in with a "... Dios es Grande." (God is Great) to which they both agreed, and we got out of that awkward situation.

Anyway it was a super good week, and we're having a great time. Glad everyone else is doing well!

Elder Partridge