11 - Coba 6

So it's now officially a month into the mission. Looking back, it is amazing to see all of the progress I've made. The Spanish is still progressing. I'm not fluent yet, but I'm getting there. We got hit with a couple of major storms, but we now have some clear skies.

Something interesting happened last week. President Kirkham assigned another missionary to work with us in Coba. We will be working in a trio now. The new missionary is Elder Forsythe. He transferred into our area from Tizimin, a city northwest of Cancun. He has been in the mission for about nine months and speaks good Spanish. I'm looking forward to working with him. He is a really fun missionary to have around. He likes to talk and help other missionaries with their Spanish. He is from Provo, but before that he was in Texas. There is a lot I'm learning from him already.

Things have been progressing in some ways. We unfortunately had to drop off investigators last week because they were not keeping any commitments. But we do have one golden investigator we are teaching. Her name is E. She was referred from another member and accepted our message from the start. She really loved church. After her first Sunday, she told us in our next visit that she wanted to be baptized. We are so excited to work with her.

So when we were visiting with one of the members in the ward, she shared something really interesting. Everyone here lives in some degree of poverty. Most can manage to live in a house and live well enough. But they are also very thankful for their living condition. They are afraid of earning too much money because they don't want to become prideful. When they earn more money, they are afraid of thinking that it is because of them that they are prospering instead of the blessings of God. In the Book of Mormon, we see this kind of thing happening over and over again. It is important to remember our blessings and to give thanks to God. A good story to go with this is the story of the ten lepers. Read it.

Elder Bailey