Hey fam!

My mind is kind of in a whir cause the week has been really crazy, but I'll try to go day by day and let you all get a feel of what it's like over here in God's country.

Sunday:

Sundays are one of my favorite days. We get to go to two church services and both wards are just awesome! The first ward we go to is the Talisay ward. The kids there are sooo fun/funny/great. After church we spend some time with them and get to know more about them/play they're little games. One of the focuses I have is befriending the rising generation so that when it comes time to serve missions they will want to, and not just flake out. In the whole stake of Guam there are 212 or so mission age members. Only eight are actually out serving right now. That's why I want to get them out there when they get older, and hopefully when it comes time they remember the elders they grew up with and want to be like them. That's the hope at least. I think they will because they're all just so fantastic in both spiritual matters and in loving everybody.

The second ward we go to isn't even a ward. It's called the Merizo group. Before you can get a branch, it has to start out as a group. We're reaaaaaally pushing to make it a branch in December, we just need one more aaronic priesthood holder. I love going to this church the best because they're my people. They're the people that Elder Holmes and I are baptizing and teaching and I'm already getting a glimpse of how easy it is to love people if you put your whole heart into the work.

Alright, I'm not gonna go day by day anymore, I'm just gonna hit the highlights for the rest of the week.

We met up with a new investigator named Keisha and her family. The best way to describe her is as follows: typical funny black lady. For the first part of our lessons, before we actually start the teaching, we just have these funny wit battles, and they usually end with one of us giving up and then settling down enough to pray. She's awesome, and her whole philosophy on religion is that she wants to find out for herself, that we can't "logic" her into believing, which was fine by us! It led in perfectly to praying to know if it was true and we explained to her that that's the way Joseph Smith restored the gospel; he found out for himself, and didn't just go blindly by what others said.

The Stanleys are getting really close to baptism, they're just always gone! It's hard to teach them lessons when they're not there, ya feel me? We check every day to see if they're there or not and then we teach them as much as we can, within reason, because they're doing all the stuff that they need to do to be baptized, they just don't know the fullness of the gospel yet.

The last thing that's coming up is our group's Christmas party. We're having it on the nineteenth, which just so happens to be the day that the Stanleys are planned to get baptized. What a concidence! :) The main goal for the Christmas party is to just keeping the unity of the group alive, and bringing the investigators/ new converts closer together. That's the biggest struggle here, getting the new converts to stay because they know the truth, they just get besieged by outside pressures, and then they cave in.

That pretty much sums up the week. Things are going better now, and I really appreciate the prayers! God really does listen when we speak to him.

Love you all!

Love,

Elder Devon L. Gneiting