1 month in the field

It's been a rather strange week in Santa Maria. My companion has some wierd stomach bacteria that stops him from going out. In 3rd ward, one of the missionaries has some head injury that stops him from going out. So for the last week I've been working with Elder Rogers. We have been locking the two sick people up together in our zone leaders appartment while we go out and work. Poor zone leaders. We are eating all of there food, but the sickly elders keep the place spotless. I guess when you have nothing else to do you clean. Even with this set back though the work is progressing. We had a baptism last night. We baptised and confirmed an 8 year old. He is a child of record but still it was cool to be a part of the baptism. We were supposed to have a convert baptism on the 21st but it was pushed back to the 5th of december. Bummer. :( Oh well, I've decided to count it as a November baptism still. We also set 2 more people with a date and will have 2 baptism on December 19th, if all goes as planned. Super excited about that. Don't worry about all the steak and getting fat. I've actually lost about 10 pounds since I left the house almost 2 months ago. Crazy to think I've been gone that long. Cool story of the week. We were headed to our car to drive to a ward correlation when I saw a lady working in her garage. We had parked in front of her house and were a little ways off. Well I got the impression to go and talk to her. As we approached she went through the garage into a door that led to the back yard. Not wanting to ignore the prompting I entered her garage and her back yard. The moment I said "hello, hows your day?" She burst into tears. She was having a horrible day and was ready to just give up. I talked with her a bit and then promised I would be back in about 20 minutes. We still had to go to ward correlation. Luckily ward correlation involved us going on splits with the ward missionaries. So I went to the correlation picked up my new companion for the night and headed back to the ladies house. As we began to talk with her I found out that she was trying to help her father, who was drinking himself to death and it had been a very trying day. She had been praying for God to send help from above, and then we showed up in her back yard. She was super receptive as we taught her about the Restoration. By the end of the lesson she thanked us for bringing such a wonderful spirit into her life and her day. We gave her a book of Mormon and she is reading it and loving it! The work overall is going great. I love it! I love you as well. Take care and I'll write you next week.

Love,
Elder Tingey