Hello from my new email address!

Hello family and everyone else!

You may have noticed that I am writing from a different email address. The Church just partnered up with Gmail to give us a sweet, new MyLDSMail account. It's pretty dang cool, we have a lot more space to store email and stuff like that...although I'm still waiting for all the email from my old account to migrated to this one. So if you want to email me, my new email address is: jacob.budge@myldsmail.net

This week Elder Escobar and I have had a few really cool experiences, especially with Amalia and Miguel, a couple that has lived together for 27 years but have never been married! Getting them married has been our main focus with them, and last week they both told us that they were willing to get their papers in order so we can head out to a judge (a friend of all the missionaries) in the next city over to get em hitched. But, there have been a few hiccups along the way. Last week, after teaching the Plan of Salvation, Miguel told us that he no longer wanted to visit with us, and that we should come back in a month to see if he's ready to begin to progress again. The next day, he was attacked by 12 dogs, and started to have severe problems with his spine--needless to say, since then he has willfully attended all of our lessons with his wife, has fulfilled all of the commitments we have left with them, and has been progressing very rapidly. Sometimes it's funny the way Lord lets us know that we're doing what's right or what's wrong.

This past week, we visited with Amalia while Miguel was sleeping (because of his back problems) and she told us that she didn't want to marry Miguel. I couldn't believe what I was hearing! After 27 years of living together, how could that be possible?! We read the Book of Mormon together, got on our knees, and had her pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true. She started to cry, and after the prayer, she looked at me and said, "Don't worry. Everything will be fine." We returned two days later, and both were ready and willing to be married and to be baptized. If everything goes as planned, we'll get both done this week. When we visited them Miguel told us, very sincerely, "What if you two are angels sent from God, and 10 years from now I'll be able to stand up in the congregation and tell everyone that God sent angels to my wife and I?" I was deeply touched by that comment, especially because that was a major theme of the Zone Conference we had on Wednesday. Elder Holland said (paraphrasing): "Welcome to the work of angels. In the eyes of God and in the hearts of the members who pray for you, you are those angels". I will not soon forget that day. And the memory of it will be even sweeter when we enter the waters of baptism on Sunday! Please, please pray that all will go well with them this week.

That's all the news I've got for you. I'm going to attach some pictures of the service we did this morning. One of them is of me doing my personal favorite of all the work positions...supervising! hahaha. But before then I was rockin the pickaxe like you wouldn't believe!

Elder Budge