Bon Dia di Curacao!

Wow, we are on the island of Curacao!!! It is awesome here!!! We are going to have to go on a vacation down here when I get back! We will come and visit Aruba and Curacao! We are with Elder Welch and Elder Holt right now, it is awesome!!! (Elder Holt was Jeff’s companion in the Provo MTC!) We flew out of Aruba last night on a big commercial plane and it was literally like a twenty or thirty minute flight, the shortest flight of my life! Haha, and we actually sat on the plane behind a couple from Tucson!! What a coincidence. I don't think that they were members though, they didn't seem to want to talk too much.

I haven't received anything besides the letter from Grandma Weech, but it's all good! I'm just happy to have the opportunity to be here in the islands! Well, I would probably say to wait until a package makes it here to me in Aruba so that we know for sure if the mail thing will work sending it here. I'm pretty sure that it will cost to receive things at President Gonzalez's home, but we could definitely do that if we needed to. I think they're pretty full in Santo Domingo with my packages that are waiting to come to me, and the other thing is that I kind of need to keep my church account free of package charges, because it's a little tough to keep track of money in that account here in Aruba. So we will wait until the garment package shows up, and then I will let you know, hopefully next week. But thanks so much!!! (We are having quite a hard time finding a good way to get things to Jeff in Aruba. None of the birthday packages/letters we have sent for the past month/six weeks have made it to him yet. I guess he must be wearing "blue striped" garments or washing more often because none of the replacement garments have made it to him either. :) Thank goodness for email so we can stay in touch with him that way!)

To answer Dad’s question, we actually never got to Skype with President Antivilo before he left and we still haven’t gotten an email from the new President, so we will hopefully be talking to him soon. I think that the new president should be coming down here this transfer sometime from what the AP’s have told us. Wow! You can get fireworks there now, huh? I forgot about that. That will be so sweet when I get back. Can you get bottle rockets? I bet you give mom fits when you buy those things, haha! Does she not like them? I hope she does like them because that’s one of the things I want to do when I get back now that it’s legal in Gilbert!

Well, we are still in about the same position with a lot of people. The thing is that there are a lot of people that we can only meet with like once a week, and there are a lot of people with addiction issues, and then there are a lot of people who just don't feel ready to be baptized. We have a lot of new people who just came to church for the first time too, so that is sweet! We are probably going to have a baptism of a member’s granddaughter named Karen. She is 9 and knows sooo much!!! She is way smart. That could be this Saturday or next Saturday. We are going to see. Sorry to be so brief, but I'm almost out of time.

I got sick this week, but we were still able to go out every day. I was sick for like four days, but I think we only lost like an hour or two total of proselyting time. It’s all good!

I actually got to translate yesterday in church using a headset, it was way sweet!!! I loved it.

I am so grateful for where I came from and the family that I have. I have been so blessed by unbelievable examples in my life. I am so grateful to have lived in an area where the church and it's members are so strong. I am so grateful to be in the true Church of Jesus Christ. I know that He lives and loves us. I know that He can overcome ANYTHING. If we will just believe Him and move forward putting one foot in front of the other everyday, He can and will heal us, sometimes so subtly that we don't notice it.

I love you!

Elder DeSpain