Cockroaches from Outer Space

Hey everyone,

So another week has gone by already.  As time goes on it goes by faster and

faster.  I can't believe I've almost been out for 6 months.  We had a fun week.  

We baptized Jette Warnick and Aaron Hoffman from the AFB on Saturday.

Both their families were there because they also wanted to watch the

graduation on Friday.  Jette is the girl that I was talking about in the last

letter and Aaron is the guy that had the answer to his prayer at the latrine.  

Elder Smith baptized and I confirmed Aaron.  Jette was baptized and

confirmed by her Grandpa.  We went to lunch at a really good Chinese buffet

after the baptisms.  Elder and Sister Reynolds (military relations missionary

couple) said they would treat us to lunch every time we baptized someone

from the base.

I forgot to mention this in my previous letter but Elder Ronan Dennis, the

other guy from Cedar that left the same time as me, is in my district.  He

and Elder Solano, who is from a little town by Tijuana called Tecate, serve

together.  I don't know if I mentioned it in previous letters but  Elder Smith and

I cover a Spanish ward, English ward, and the ward on base.  Elder Solano

and Dennis cover the northern half of the same English and Spanish ward.  

Its fun to teach in both English and Spanish.  I like practicing both. We can't

proselyte on the base so the only interaction we get from the base is when

people that live on base feed us dinner and when we teach our Sunday

school there.

We have one investigator with a baptismal date.  Her husband is a

member in the Marines and they live in a house on base.  Sister Meyer

has been going to church for a couple years and now wants to be baptized

into it.  The other day we were teaching them a lesson, Elder Smith was

talking and as I was sitting and listening. Then the cats ran into the room.  

They were chasing a big black bug.  Well, actually huge might be a better

adjective.  It was the size of a jeep!  Well maybe not quite that big, but it

was huge ;)  But I ignored it because we were having a nice, spiritual

lesson.  But the cats kept trying to get it out from behind the shelf.  Soon

enough Brother Meyer noticed and went over to investigate.  Then he

saw the big, huge cockroach and got mad.  I think he might be scared

of bugs :)  It crawled onto his PS3 so he picked up the cat and said, "I'll

just aim you at it."  He pushed the cat's face into it a couple times and it

still wouldn't budge.  It fell into a basket a couple seconds later so he

hurried and put that outside his front door.  After that little incident we

continued teaching about the plan of salvation and it ended quite nicely.  

One of the things we talked about in our lesson with them was about the

3 degrees of glory.  

The terrestrial and telestial are like a circle.  Eventually you fill up, you

can't progress anymore.  As you can see in my beautiful illustration

below, the bottom two have a limit.    But the Celestial Kingdom is like

a bowl.  There are no limits of how much you can progress, how high

you can go.  The possibilities are limitless.  So keep remembering

that and aim for eternal progression.

    U

Celestial

              O

Terrestrial and Telestial

We had zone conference on Wednesday.  The big focus this time was

on prayer and teaching with the spirit.  They really emphasized the fact

that we need to get our investigators to pray.  I really liked this conference,

just like all the other ones.  We were combined with one of the other 

San Antonio zones.  I got to see three elders from my old district.  It was

fun talking to them again.

Elder Solano was wondering if it would be possible for him to get one

of those mini PMG's.  From the email you sent me it sounds like we can't

get them anymore but I thought I might as well ask.

Everyone keep working hard in all that you do.  You can achieve anything

you want to through small and simple means.  One step at a time.  I love you

all and stay close to the Lord.

Love,

Elder Gray