February 6, 2012

Dear Family,

I got a little sick over the past couple days but nothing too serious.

Unfortunately, Evangelina and her girls didn't get baptized because some issues came up unexpectedly that really took us all by surprise and I still feel like I don't know the gyst of the entire situation.  I know in the past Evangelina and Gabriel had their issues but those were due to Gabriel's lifestyle of drinking and partying. It seems she is possibly resentful towards him still and can't accept that he has changed.  Gabrial is very trusting with us and has expressed to me that he wants to save his marriage but Evangelina is currently being uncooperative.  We referred him to President Tejada (our Branch President) and it didn't help at all. As a matter of fact it made things a little worse.  Gabriel now doesn't want to be obligated to go to the Branch every Sunday because he feels like President isn't sensitive to his situation (I told  President Tejada beforehand to handle it with delicacy predicting that something like this would happen).  Thankfully he has a really strong testimony that the church is true, but unfortunately, he just realized not all of its leaders are perfect.  Gabriel also told me Evangelina lied to us about the Word of Wisdom because she is still drinking coffee.

I love President Tejada, and we have a great relationship with him as the missionaries, but unfortunately it seems like he isn't sensitive enough to these kind of situations.

Other than that, our week went pretty  well.  We set four more baptismal dates and found a sweet, new investigator through one of our members (with whom we set a baptismal date).  So those were some really tender mercies the Lord prepared for us after the depressing situation with the Cervantes family.  We will continue to work closely with them and see if we will  be able to help them out.  Gabriel really, really trusts me and has expressed a lot of gratitude for the spiritual support I  provided him through this difficult time.  Please pray that the  Lord blesses me with the gift of discernment so I can know how  best to help him and his family.

Sister Zuniga got baptized two weeks ago and is doing really well.  I only have 3 minutes left so I don't have time to send you the photos. I am so happy that the Giants rocked the patriots!!!

Love,

Elder Kinney