Well, I’ll just start off by answering a few of your questions about the pictures. The reason I don’t have many pics with me in them is because I don’t really have any, but I'll try to get some more in the next little while. Also, the picture with the roof is just a picture I took because in my area, it can be fairly mixed, and a lot of the houses that were here first have been converted into apartments. You might wonder why a roof is important in my area. Along with keeping out the elements it is also an indicator of a Spanish house. A roof that has a bunch of satellite dishes on it, is a pretty good sign that the house contains Spanish people. The larger pic of a bunch of houses is the town of Ossining. That’s were we've been doing most of our work so far. It is a really run down town, but then again most of the Spanish people live in the more rundown part of town although there are nicer communities . The tree is also in Ossining. It's right in front of the house of a couple Ecuadorian guys that we taught for a little while. And yes, the videos are quite self explanatory.
Anyways, once again I have some sad news. Ruben has decided that he doesn’t want the gospel message. Well, at least not for the time being. Who knows what God has in store for him? Unfortunately, he wasn’t willing to exercise his faith and put God before work, so he's unwilling to meet with us because all of a sudden he's too busy. Recently I've been thinking a lot about the tactics that Satan uses to keep people from hearing this message and I've come to the conclusion that for the people in this area that work is a very big tool for Satan. It can be a blessing and me and Elder Lopez try to teach people that Heavenly Father will provide them with work, even better than what they have, if they practice their faith. However, we haven’t been able to convince anyone of that fact and instead they become too busy to meet with us. Another thing I found is how spiritually destructive alcohol really is. We were teaching this really uneducated guy the other week, his name is Julio (hoo-lee-oh) and we could tell that he was a little drunk, and everything we were trying to say to him was not getting through to him at all, so we decided that we'd finish the lesson. When we announced that we were finished he said that he wanted to say a prayer too. So I start off by saying a prayer, to kinda teach him how we pray and then this is when it got interesting. His prayer actually started off pretty good, he was saying what he was thankful for and asking for answers to his questions and everything else a normal person says in a prayer, but that was just his beginning. He then started yelling about the bible and he jumped up out of his chair, grabbed one of our pamphlets which we had given him and started thanking God for this "bible" that he now had and all sorts of other stuff that neither myself or Lopez really understood. It was really interesting! Eventually he quieted down and said "Perdóname Padre" (Forgive me Father) like 5 times and then said amen. I thought it was quite an interesting prayer but of course we didn’t say anything about it to him. After that he said he wanted to come to church with us, so we told him that we'd find him a ride, but if he didn’t show, we wouldn’t be able to meet with him anymore and you guessed it. He didn’t show. So that’s the end that story.
Anyways I don’t have anything else to add for this week. I Love you all, and look forward to hearing from you next week.
Les Quiero Mucho, Carson
P.S. I found a coat in the apartment that a previous missionary had left behind, and I’m gonna use that one for a little while, because according to Lopez, the deals in the city are much better, and I'm much more likely to find a better deal. So that’s what I’m gonna do for now. (the one I found is just like the one I sent back. just a little older and larger around.)
