Operation Ingrown Toenail

Operation Ingrown Toenail. You heard right. I´ve had an ingrown toenail for about a year, but it´s never bugged me too bad until a couple weeks ago. So I called Hermana Rodriguez last night, and she told me to go to the MTC doctor this morning. Elder Shaver, from Eagle Idaho operated on me. We had some good mutual Eagle connections, so we passed the time well. He numbed the toe, and cut out the bad part of the nail. Quite anti-climactic, but now my toe is better than ever. We stopped by McDonalds afterwards on our way to the metro. All in all, an excellent morning in downtown Santo Domingo!

We´ve started teaching a man who has been less active for about 13 years. He lost a little daughter a couple weeks ago and decided to come back to church. We decided to teach his family, and have put baptismal dates with his two kids. Ashley (10), and get this, John Taylor (8). We´ve had some good visits and I think they´re going to progress. Maria is doing great. She´s still looking good for baptism on the 28th of this month. Gabriela has a lot of interest. Her husband´s a super chill guy that is very nice, but works most Sundays.

In other news, I read an excellent talk by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin called Sunday Will Come. I loved it. He related it to Christ´s resurrection. We all have our Fridays, when everything goes wrong in life. However, Sunday morning will always come. That´s what I like about religion. I can´t imagine living life without the hope that everything will be made fair and just in the end. Let´s be honest, all too often, this life is not fair. But that is why we believe in a compensating after life. If we keep that hope kindled in our everyday life, life treats us better.

Love to all,

Elder LeCheminant

I thought a lot about the mercy and compassion of God

Dear Family & Friends

We finished the year in style, and have started the new with pizazz. I´m not quite sure what that means, but I do know that we´re gonna find out if the Mayans were right this year.

We had an excellent week. Francisco, the man that we´ve worked with closely for the past 5 months entered into the waters of baptism on Saturday night. Then, the first day of 2012 he was confirmed a member of the Church. It was an incredible experience. I thought a lot about the mercy and compassion of God. He´s always there to accept us when we repent and do our part. His wife Santa shared her testimony at the baptism and they both shared their testimonies on Sunday. After the baptism, Santa made us a mean Dominican stew and we all felt good.

New Years Eve here is wild. Loud music is always a part of the culture here. But it was only amplified. These past two weeks, everybody has spent their vacations by sitting outside, dancing bachata, and drinking beer.

I will tell you another story of the week. TERREMOTO! My first earthquake. It was at about 5 A.M and it scared us all when we felt all the beds shaking. No need to fear, it was just a little one, and it did nothing else but give us good conversation starters throughout the week. I said we were going to be looking for some good new investigators, and we were blessed to find a few new people with a lot of interest.

We contacted a super cool woman named Gabriela. She´s a mother that went to all three hours of Church yesterday with her two children. She´s got a lot of personality. She told us to mark off some chapters in the Book of Mormon that will help her. She´s accepted a baptismal date, and is excited to learn more.

Maria is still as strong as ever. She should be getting baptized in a couple of weeks.

For P-Day we cleaned and went to a priesthood ward activity playing dominoes. I´ll have to teach you all how to play Dominican dominoes.

It´s a big holiday here today. The Day of Kings; honoring the three wise men; so nobody´s working.

I got some great Christmas letters from friends and family. Tell everybody thanks!

Well, I´m doing well!

Love,

Felipe Victor