e-mail July 19, 2010

Dear all,

Well, it was another week in San Ramon! Things are going good. We still haven´t seen that much success, but we are working hard. This area has really been a learning area for me. I am really learning about working hard, even when things are hard or unsuccessfull. I have learned a lot of about missionary work and how it relates to real life. My comp has been struggling a little big. He has been branch president for 5 months and it is hard. It´s rough when we have to work on missionary work and keeping the branch running. There has been some talk about even shutting down the branch, but that´s just rumor.

Things have been gonig well. Nother big happened this week. We almost ate lengua (tongue) the other day at the restaurant, but my comp didn't feel like eating it. I´m sure one day i will get it. So the pictures that are a attached are as follows: 1. The first is the usual position of my comp and I waiting for a ride. 2. The other is of our lunch and dinner for Sunday. What a hearty meal.

The only thing that really happened this week was yesterday, we walked 30 minutes to one of our communities to visit some of our members that haven´t come in a few weeks. The one good member we have up there has gone through the temple. We went in and her son was drinking coffee. She said that she doesn´t drink it, just her son. She said that he is really young, 5, and doesn´t know that it´s bad. She said she will take it away in like a year. So we just went into her with a machete. We talked to her about teaching by example and from a young age. we spent about an hour there talking about living the gosple. That is the big struggle that we have right now. We can´t take investigators to church if there are no members in the church.

Anyway, a lot of missionaries are losing animo this long change. We are having some problems between the gringos and the Latinos. I think there might be some changes this week. I might get changed at the end of this change no matter what. I thought I might be staying, but then the ZL said that he thinks I´ll probably get changed. We will see what happens.

That´s about all. My spanish is getting pretty good. I am feeling good about what we are doing and i am learning a lot about myself and the gosple right now. Thank you for all of your encouragment. I am still looking for good ideas of things to do on p-days. Dale pues

Elder Ashby

I can also recieve pictures. I want to see some people´s pictures like yours from your trip and I love getting the blogs as emails becasue the have pictures.