1/27/10

Hola Familia!I think I'm going to have a new email address. The church is shifting to an email program managed by Google. It should be clifton.dunlap@myldsmail.net. For now, you probably should send emails to both that and my old until it all gets worked out. There's still some kinks that aren't working too well. As far as news, we got a new spanish elder in the mission this week. He served in Mexico for about 6 months and then got sick. He then went home and kept working in his home mission for about 6 more months and recently got reassigned here. He's down in the branch but I was able to meet him at zone conference yesterday. He really seems like an amazing addition to the mission. I'm excited because he was very impressive. He'll be great for the work here. No, we haven't been able to go to the temple yet. We're really wanting to go adn hopefully will be able to in the beginning of march when the ward takes a bus to the temple.The weather has turned off cold. I think I said last week that the forecast was supposed to be warm, but it snowed the next day. Calgary weather is pretty much unpredictable. Miracles continue to happen in this area. We've started teaching a new investigator that's reading and is honestly searching. He had been a contact from several months ago that we had the impression to stop by when we were near his house. He immediately let us in to teach him a first lesson. He previously hadn't been very open to meeting with us, but some recent events had left him really searching.After some scheduling conflicts, we finally set an appointment with the Orozco family that we found about two weeks ago. We're teaching them for the first time tomorrow. We've been praying hard that they'll be prepared to hear our message. They had a great experience with the priesthood in Mexico several years ago and we really have a good feeling about them. When we met them, they were at the home of some investigators and were telling them about how someone had wrecked near their house in Mexico and two missionaries had walked by and given the person a blessing. THe person was miraculously healed very quickly. They were telling our investigators about the priesthood we have in our church. We hope that this experience has helped prepared them for the message of the Restauration. Fanni is an investigator that had been taught for several months adn finally decided to be married as well. Her and her husband both told a member family that they want to be baptized. We have plans to extend them a date hopefully tomorrow as well. They got married on Monday and the members put together a nice wedding at the chapel. It was great to see how happy they both were to take this step. We were eating dinner at their house and then taught a lesson afterwards. We asked when we'd be able to come back and visit them and they said they didn't know because they didn't know what day they would get married. Elder Galloway adn were so excited it was hard not to jump off the couch jump up and down.The ward also had a wedding adn three baptisms on Saturday. So, we were able to attend 2 weddings in 3 days. The baptism went very well and the ward really supported it. The investigators shared some very sincere and spiritual testimonies.Elder Galloway adn I have been blessed in so many ways together. My prayers have become very gratitude filled over the last could weeks and days. My testimony of the spirit and it's role in this work has really been strengthened. We can teach people all we can as hard as we can, but the spirit is really what does the teaching and the changing. The spirit touching people's hearts is really what provokes them to change adn draw closer to Christ. We've been trying hard to help our members and investigators feel the spirit more than anything else in our visits.Thank you for all the love ann support! I'm glad to hear that all is going well at home.Con amor,Elder Dunlap