January 9, 2012

Hello fam,

Well another week as gone by and here I am again. This week was a great week. Friday was a good day, I learned a lot.

Friday we had the opportunity to leave with a returned missionary. He showed up at our house about 10 in the morning and was ready to go to work! He was really excited and willing to do whatever we needed him to do. We were able to see a lot of our investigators and some less active members. It was a good experience to hear the testimony of this returned missionary.

This isn’t your ordinary returned missionary; he is practically blind in one eye the left one only 40 % of his vision works and on the right 10 %. When he reads he has to put the book up to his face or when he writes he has the same problem. He never really said how difficult the mission was for him, but for how grateful he was for his companions to have helped him, read, or write or take care of him when he needed it. He said it was always a sad day when he had to say goodbye to another companion, but he said that one day his president called him up and said that he had a present for him: that he would be going home that he needed to end his mission at his house. He didn’t want to leave at first, but he decided to obey what his president said and returned home and was able to end his mission at home. He baptized his Dad and Mom.

This returned missionary is a great example. He is just grateful for everything that has happened in his life. He has been trying to find that lucky girl, but it isn’t going very well for him. He doesn’t get sad or mad he jokes about it and just moves on.

At times I worry a lot about my weaknesses and I forget of what I have. I am grateful for you all and all of the blessings that I have received another cool thing that I noticed how many blessings this returned missionary received after his mission.

I am finally going to Manaus and I think I will hopefully be staying there for a while. Boa Vista was a good area. I met a lot of good people that know how to serve and think about others than themselves. I'm leaving Tuesday morning on the plane thank goodness. Haha president visited Boa Vista 2 weeks ago and he and Sister Klein got here by car. I think, then, they realized that the road wasn’t very good to ride on. So we will go by plane.

Love you guys,

I will let you know about my new area.

Elder Ontiveros