Helaman's Mighty Men . . .: Two Tickets to Paradise

Familia Crump. Good to chat once again this beautiful Monday. First things first, Happy B-Day to my Papa!! Wow does time go by fast! I can’t believe it’s already passed August 16th once again! I hope yesterday was a great day and you were able to enjoy the fact that nobody is home right now, haha. That’s gotta be real weird. But just know I love you so much, Dad. You are the best example in the entire world and have always given your all for the family. On the mission I see examples of a million different types of dads and I can honestly say that I have been blessed with the best dad there is. Everything you do is for the welfare of us all and I’m slowly starting to understand the magnitude of what you have done while here in El Salvador. Love you Pops. You’re the best.

Alrighty, so here is the scoop here in Paraiso. Every time I get on the bus to go to the stake center I think of the song, “I’ve got, two tickets to Paradise, pack your bags and ya ya ya” haha because they give me two bus tickets that say ‘Paraiso’. So that always makes me laugh haha. But everything is going great for my comp and I here. There are always a million things to do and I have never been so stressed in my life but I’ve been able to find things to help me relax some and slowly but surely I’m adapting to things here.

This week we get to go to the temple as a mission which is gonna be so amazing. We went a few weeks ago but it was just for all of our investigators. I’m pumped to get some major time revelation!

As a mission we are focusing a ton on taking care of our converts and what we can do to help people stay in church. The problem we are having is that more than half of the converts some times go inactive 6 months after being baptized. So President has helped us focus a ton on that as of recent. So anyway, Elder Bonilla has been here a good while and baptized a lot so we have our work cut out for us in taking care of all his converts. Last Wednesday we were planning out the day and we both decided we needed to go visit a lady that is inactive after having been baptized like 4 months ago. She wasn’t very nice to my comp in the past so he didn’t really want to go but we put that aside and decided to do what Pres says. So we went and on the way we decided to contact a bunch of people we saw. We ended up finding a family while we were walking and they ended up being super positive. We visited them Friday and ended up bringing 5 of them to church yesterday. It was so amazing. The Lord promises us blessings when we are obedient and because we listened to President we were able to be guided to Hno Luis and his family.

Another crazy thing that has been happening this week is that we have been teaching José, a 25 year old guy that lives with his wife and little boy. The wife, Mary, got baptized like a month ago and we are trying to complete the family now. The thing is that the family has a huge debt from when the dad had back surgery and the mom had no money to live on. They recently sold literally everything in their house to pay the last payment and now have nothing but their beds, a tiny stove, a few chairs and dishes in their house. It’s crazy. But on Saturday we promised José a lot of the blessings he needs in his life if he accepted a baptism date and did a fast with us over the weekend. He accepted and on Saturday we did a fast with the two of them. It was the easiest fast I have done. Having started it with them and listening to the prayer of the Hno José helped me a ton to finish the fast strong. It was sweet to see them be humble enough to fast and realize that God is now committed to bless them as long as they keep being obedient. The Hna Mary now has to have surgery next week, how they are going to pay for it I have no idea, we are gonna try and help them and see what happens. But I have no doubt everything will end up fine if they keep doing everything they need to to live the commandments and be worthy!

That’s everything for the week family. Love you. Zacho, good luck out there in the field. You’re gonna do great. Hope you had a good bday Dad. Love you lots. Have a great week! SALU!!!

Elder Crump

These pictures are from saying goodbye in Matthew's last area of Buena Vista.