February 2, 2011

Dear Family,

Bad weeks are hard to come by here in beautiful Madrid Spain. As you could probably guess, it was another wonderful week...busy, but surely wonderful! I loved the updates on the family this last week and I loved hearing about how everything went with Cari´s baptism.

Right now, Elder Ketchum and I are in Toledo for preparation day. What a beautiful and ancient city. It is just fantastic. Elder Ketchum has a lot of patience with me as about every corner I stop in amazement and say, ¨Wow, how beautiful is that, oh and that, oh and that too....wow!¨ He is a great companion and I look forward, not complaining at all about the blessing we have to be training right now, but I do look forward to his last transfer in being together more often. It is just a HUGE blessing being able to have companions that are sooo seasoned and perfected and that have devoloped so nicely Christlike attributes and know how to do missionary work. I have been so blessed to have had so many companions like that, and Elder Ketchum is definitely one of the most advanced. It is hard to keep up with him, as he is so outstanding. We get along and we both desire to work hard and, of course, baptize.

This week has been great. We have continued to do 3 weekly exchanges which requires that I be out of the area 2 times every 9-10 days, and 2 other days, I am with another companion and it´s Elder Ketchum that leaves and goes to another area. It is really hard doing all of these, but we are seeing a lot of good results. Most importantly we are able to see how the missionaries are doing the work, their strong and weak points as missionaries, and this knowledge allows us to better analyze the needs of the mission and where we need to go with the training. It is good and from what we have noted so far is that the missionaries are benefiting a lot from these 1 day exchanges and we are also receiving a lot of blessings.

We, right now, oh well yeah. We had a baptism last Saturday. Fernando Andrade got baptized, the same day as Cari, and I spake about baptism. It was a great baptismal service and Fernando was really happy. He said that he felt really good, like aliviated, afterwards.

We, right now, are trying to find more people who are dedicated to being baptized. We don´t have the best investigator pool right now, so we need to do some better finding so that we can help more people. Fausto Jaramillo from Ecuador, I am not sure if I commented about him, is doing really well. He has now come to church 4 times, and has been to 2 baptismal services. He has a baptismal date for the 15th of February and is excited for it. He is really just waiting for his testimony at this point. He says that he is praying and reading in the Book of Mormon, he actually had to work in a far away city all of last week and brought with him his Book of Mormon and was able to read while he was there, so we hope that he is able to receive his answer soon. I am not sure if he actaully reads every day, but his is reading, so that is good news. We are also teaching, well mainly Elder Ketchum and his companion Elder Gardner from Afton Wyoming, a little 10 year old boy whose parents are less active from Bolivia. They have lived here for a while and are now getting back into the church. They have now come to church a few times in a row and the father just received the Aaronic Priesthood in the office of Priest, I believe. They are a great family, two parents and two children. Johann is excited for his baptism and hopefully his dad can baptize him. That beautiful thought just came to me.

Well, I have to go. I am glad that you all had a great week and I hope that this next week goes the same. Say hi to everyone for me, and actually we were reading in a church news newspaper that some missionary got and I was thinking that it would be really neat to be able to work in the MTC when I get back. I have no idea how any of that works. I have heard that Elder Carr might be teaching their right now and maybe one more missionary from this mission. If you could maybe look that up and see if that is possible/a good option, I would thank you for it. I love you sooo much and have the best week ever.

Don´t forget to ¨Look unto Christ in every thought. Doubt not, fear not.¨

I love you all. Congrats on your talk Cami!!!! and Happy Birthday Cari!!!! I give you my welcome into the church. ¡Bienvenida hermana!

con mucho amor y cariño y gratitud por siempre orar por mi. Oro por ustedes también.

Élder Driggs