I love the Gospel! Amen.

Dearest Family!

Thanks for all the letters that you guys sent! It was so nice to read them and laugh and smile and feel your love and feel the Spirit also! I'm glad that everyone is doing great! The Lord is protecting and blessing our family! Jonathan, I'm glad that everything turned out well with your surgery and that you're covering! I hope that everyone has been treating you good in your times of health trials! Sounds like Alex and David are doing good too, and I know that yall had a good time with Travis. I miss my brothers! Keep writing me and giving me mission advice:) Raquel and Ben and Tyler are also doing really good too, so that makes me happy. I always want the best for the first family that emerged from us kids. How old is Ben now? 26? Heavenly Father protected Lisette during work in a situation that was really hazardous too - don't know if everyone knows that story. Travis is obviously living the dream of a teenage kid this summer, so that's pretty sick too! He's never gonna forget his summer at SOAR:) Mom also sounds like she's doing perfect and is happy! And the Raquel & fam are gonna visit mom in the end of July, so that'll make mom even happier! And Dad got to have a good experience at scout camp with his youngest son and is strong and healthy (as always, haha). The Lord is blessing us a lot, even if we don't realize it. So don't forget him. EVER. And as mom wrote to me, we should always count our blessings:)

Not much to say this week. It flew by and I feel like I wrote you guys like 2 or 3 days ago. But we have an investigator who I'm positive is gonna get baptized!!! Por fin! Her name is Nicole and she's 13 years old. She's really great, and wants to make great changes in her life, because she's been acting up in school, in home, with her friends, and has gotten into smoking already at a young age. She lives with her dad and her older brother. Her dad is already a member but has been inactive for most of Nicole's life, and so she never went to church. But now the dad's going, she's going, and we hope to start teaching the son and get him to go to church too. He is 16 yrs old. We're gonna visit them tonight and have a lesson with them. SWEET! Welp, I don't really have much else to say. This area has still been difficult, and things have been a little difficult with my companion too, but I know that this time of trial will make me stronger and a better instrument in the Lord's hands if I choose to learn what the Lord wants me to learn from this experience. And I trust God with whatever plans he has for me. I hope that I can do what I need to do to become who the Lord wants me to become. Also, today we went to another waterfall, and it was cool and I didn't come close to falling off the cliff this time. I love all you guys! Be good! Stay in school! Don't do drugs! And read this scripture, ponder on it, and let it change you for good.

Joshua 1:8-9

¡Ciao!

Elder Bogdan

{written July 13, 2011}