Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day was two days ago and marked my year and a half mark of being a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That's a long stinking time!!! I entered into the MTC over 18 months ago. The Sisters that I met my first day in the MTC all finished their missions. Lastly, in exactly 5 months to the day, I'll be landing in Austin, Texas to see my family after a long time of service that has changed my life forever. That's weird. Oh dang.

Before I get too homesick though, it's good to use this kind of stuff to put everything in perspective. I don't have much time left to consecrate everything I've got to God, especially all my time, talents, and efforts! So I'm working hard and extremely thankful for all the experiences that God has given me and the circumstances that He puts me in to allow me to grow and develop. I'm working a ton here and always go to bed completely exhausted, but I love it! This week was rough with bad weather and a few other factors that didn't allow us to work as much as we would have liked, but we are working well and trying to focus on what's most important. I'm learning a ton! This area has lots of prepared people that already want to know the truth and even already want to be baptized. With many of them, it's just helping them overcome laziness and fear to get done what they need so badly. We were planning to have SO MANY PEOPLE in church this week, and then it just didn't happen. We called people beforehand, we sent church members to go pick up investigators, and we went (as asked by their mother) to wake up three investigators in any form possible. We spent 45 minutes, yelling, knocking, calling, and clapping for these people to wake up, but they never did! It was frustrating. Work impeded a lot of others from coming. However, we had two super great investigators come to church and they loved it. They've been coming for a while now and really, really, really want to get baptized. They finally marked a day to get married, March 28th being the soonest the government would allow, and then asked us if they could be baptized on the same day about two hours after the wedding! I felt so blessed to know these two special people and their family. It was great!

So, Sunday didn't go as well as we wanted, and then we spent the time running around teaching lessons and helping a special lady named Gloria. She was all set to get baptized Sunday at 7, but we knew she was a little hesitant so we went to help her! We walked all the way to her house, found she wasn't there, went and found her in the street, helped her understand how being baptized would help her in her life, then walked home with her, waited outside for her to get ready, found a member to give us a ride to the baptism, and then got everything done! Dang it was hard. I was exhausted afterwards. It was so cool though to see the difference in her face after she was baptized. It was special! Surprisingly enough, she asked me to baptize her, even though I barely met her two weeks ago. It was super special though! She didn't want to take a picture because apparently she doesn't like them, but we'll try to get a picture with her when we visit this week and help her get all ready for the Gift of the Holy Ghost on Sunday! God truly blessed us for our hard work and endurance in the face of trials and sadness. It was great!!! I'm so grateful for the love that Christ offers us and the mercy He shows. We are loved!!! How great is that!!!

I love Christ so much and am so thankful for having been able to grow to understand everything about His Gospel this past year and a half. It has been truly amazing! I'm thankful for my Savior and the sacrifice He made to help every single one of us! It's truly marvelous! I hope that everyone has a great work and continues to work hard and remember the blessings that we have!! Love you all!

Elder Ashford

PS: Here are some pictures of my area and my companion! Perus is basically a neighborhood of São Paulo, but it's a little set apart, so there are tons of houses in a little spot and then there are tons of hills and green stuff! It's cool here!