Working hard or hardly working

First off, the transfers. I am in Giron with Moya still. We are working well together and all, so I guess that President just wanted to keep us together until we die (note: die is mission jargon for finishing the mission.) But eh cool thing is that there are now new missionaries in Portal. They are very cool and all. One is Elder Raines (gringo de Utah) and the other, the "son" of Elder Raines, Elder Roduigez (a Uragayan).

So we've been visiting a lot of people lately. As a matter of fact, Christian passed his baptismal interview and gets baptized on Saturday. So that is pretty awesome...yay for us. Also, we've been working with one family in which all the kids are members but the parents aren't. Why? Because the husband doesn't want to get married. Yeah, they have six kids and have lived together for 19 years, but this guy just doesn't get that they need to get married. He said that he doesn't want to feel so committed. We'll keep working on that.

With Juan everything is going well, he is reading the Book of Mormon and praying for an answer. Oh and want to hear the crazy bit? We went to visit him and he told us he found a copy of a Book of Mormon in his house. What?!?! He went and pulled out a copy of the Book of Mormon, printed in '92. It was yellowed and the cover was pretty much destroyed but there it was, the Book of Mormon. He can't remember where he got it, but wow. It's just that his neighborhood is really ghetto and no one in the ward even remembers the last time the missionaries had gone to that neighborhood until we did. The only problem that we are having with him is that his wife is making it very difficult for him to continue (such and bringing in preachers and trapping him in the house on Sundays so he doesn't go to church). Sounds a little intense but that is how Santander-ian women are.

I've also had an awesome split with our ward mission leader this past Friday. It was great. We contacted a whole ton of people and got five appointments set up just from those contacts. We also got to go visit an old investigator of the ward who is dying from stomach cancer. So, I had no idea what to do, but after the prayer, I went directly to the Book of Mormon and started reading seemingly random scriptures about the faith and the Atonement of Christ. We finished with a prayer and a blessing, and by the end, in spite of the pain, she was smiling. I felt very strongly the Spirit guiding me in my every word. In all it was a really incredible day.

As for the menial stuff, we had zone meeting....with half the zone as trainers/newbies and the other half like me, dying this transfer. It was pretty epic. The new zone motto we invented is "Baptize and/or die". It was pretty funny.
We went bowling today as a zone activity and I actually bowled a really great. On the first one I bowled a 105 and on the second a 123. But lo and behold, an Elder who had never even bowled before pulled out a 143. I testify that there are miracles and that there is such thing as beginner's luck. We also invented several hymns---sung rap style. Word.

Love you guys,
Elder (Gabe) Rallison