Prospero Año y Felicidad

Happy New Year!

I have been thinking of the year of 2010 and it is the only year that I will have been on my mission for the whole year. And it has been a good year. I am so grateful to be a missionary and I am so grateful for all the blessing and opportunities I have been given and all the miracles I have seen. It is strange that it is now January. It has been a really good week. On Tuesday we got to travel to Santa Tecla and visit Las Palmeras to see the baptism of Natali. She is a young women and all her family are members and she was not. We taught her a lot and she started reading her scriptures and she started praying. And when I was there she said that she received her answer and knew that she had to get baptized but just didn´t know when. Turns out she

wanted to get baptized on a specific date and she chose the day that her dad got baptized a year ago on the 28th of December. So it was a great experience. Natali and I had a special bond and I felt so special because they were trying to get permission for 3 other missionaries to go to the baptism but President only gave me permission. But the baptism was special in other ways. Natali told me that if I hadn´t come she wouldn´t have gotten baptized. As a mission the goal this year was to have 2000 baptisms and Natali was 

number 2000! As a mission, we ended the year with 2001 baptisms. We just barely made it! 


Other great things that happened: We were able to have the ward Christmas party in the new chapel even though it hasn´t been dedicated yet. So the first thing that Hermana Izaguirre and I did was go to the baptismal font. And it was so beautiful. This isn´t just the missionary talking in me. I have never seen (here or in the states) a font as beautiful as the one in this chapel. When we go in the building again I will be sure to take a photo. When we were in the new chapel there was this really big guy and I had never seen him before. So I asked if he was a member. He said ¨Yes, I got baptized about 3 years ago. Elder Stevens baptized me.¨ Now that I am back in Zona Chalchuapa I am meeting people again that know Eli. Well, his name is Hans Peter. He is the biggest Salvadoranian I have ever seen. But he was nice. And he played Santa for the ward Christmas party. So, we continued having church in the house until the dedication of the church which might take place on sunday. As a culture, the Salvadoranians like to listen to really loud music so that the whole neighborhood can feel the base beating. When we were at church and they were passing the sacrament, a car drove up with the music ¨I Walk by Faith¨ from the young women playing at full blast. It was hard not to laugh. Apparently it doesn´t matter what kind fo music it is, as long as it is full blast.

I am enjoying being in my first zone because I get to see my old converts. When we went to district meeting, they were also having a primary activity for Chalchuapa and I saw Gabriel. He was a boy that He was a boy that we baptized and we were nervous if he would be active because his mom was inactive. But his mom now has a calling in the primary and they go to church every week. It was such a great experience. I am so grateful to be here. I have really loved all my areas but I am glad to not be in the city still. The people here are more humble and I feel really lucky to be where they are going to dedicate the chapel because I know that we are going to see so many blessings.

Hermana Bush

The pictures are of me and my companion at a lookout sight, me and Natali, and Santa (baptized by my very own cousin).