Snow

Dear Family,

So it finally snowed a good amount here. We got a couple inches last night, so when we woke up this morning a blanket of white covered the ground. The snow here is a lot different that the the snow in Utah that I am used to. It is much wetter here and so a majority of the snow just turns into ice in a couple hours of being outside. All of the roads are covered in slush so we will see how that affects our bicycle riding. It should be pretty fun.

Thanks for all of the emails and the large slab of chocolate. It am not sure how long it will take me to get through all of that sugar but I think will the help of my companion and the other elders in our apartment it should be gone in about a week.

This past week has been a really good week. My companion and I have really changed how we are working and we are trying to have the members help us out much more in the missionary work. We want the members to be more involved in finding and teaching people so we have been trying lots of ideas to get them involved in the work. My companion and I actaully taught the lesson in priesthood this past sunday about what the members can do to share the gospel. It was really cool and we tried to change their perception of what is success in missionary work. We talked mainly about how trying to share the gospel and inviting your friends to learn is success and tried to shift away the perception that baptism is the only way to measure success. It went really well. Our high councilman in our branch asked us to do that part of the lesson because he was supposed to teach the entire thing and he barely speaks any Spanish. He is actually from Puerto Rico but he moved here when he was very young and he knows next to no Spanish. We have actually been working with him a lot and he is really happy to be in the branch so that he can improve his Spanish.

The missionary work is coming along well. We have been teaching this lady named Dina Ventura and she is very close to being baptized. She is actually the wife of the second counselor in our branch presidency. She is a really nice Dominican lady and she comes to church every week and all of the branch activities. When ever we try to talk about baptism with her she always just says that she is not ready and that if she is going to be baptized she wants to be sure that this church is true. I am pretty sure that she knows that it is true she is just having trouble connecting all of the pieces in her mind. We have been working really hard for her and this past Monday we had a lesson where we told her that we were going to baptize her on the 8th of Feb. I then asked her if she would prepare herself for that date and she did say that she was not positive but that she would pray about that specific date. We had focused a mjority of that lesson on what it means to have faith and works. We read in the James about how he says that we should demonstrate of faith by our works. We also talked about making decisions and then asking God if our decision is right rather than asking Him to make our decisions for us. It was a really good lesson and then at the end her husband gave a very amazing pray and asked that his wife would be able to be baptized on the 8th. I really love her husband and I can tell that it is really hard for him to hear his wife say that she is not sure about the church. Almost every lesson we have with them he bears his testimony about baptism, the temple. and eternal families. I can see the love that he has for his wife and I can also feel how much he longs to be able to go to the temple with her. i wish I could do more to help them both but at this point it is completely up to her. My companion and I are going to fast this Friday for their family. She will get baptized soon, I am confident.

Missionary work is a really get thing and I really love being our here on my mission. I love being able to serve the people around me and to serve our Lord. We have really been trying to serve the members here more and we actually helped a family here switch out all of their furniture yesterday. It was just three of us ; me, my companion, and Hermano Henry. He is a really big guy for the Dominican Republic. He is about 6'5" and around 300 lbs. He is a really nice guy and a ton of fun to be around. It was pretty funny moving everything around in their house. The funniest part was that they bought a queen size mattress and it would not fit in their stairs to get it to the second floor. We actually had to basically fold the mattress in half and then shove it through the stair opening. It took us about 30 min to get is up the stairs with lots of laughing, sweating and a few cuss words thrown in. The entire time he was impersonating his wife about how she convinced him that they needed a big mattress. It was a bunch of fun and they really needed the help.

I really love Camden and everyone that is here. It is pretty cold and wet but that does that keep us from going outside. Thanks again for everything that you guys do for me. For the letters and for the prayers.

Love,
Elder Haslam

PS another great thing about Dominicans is that they love baseball. It is fun to talk to them about it and I hope that when the season starts up we will be able to go to some games with the members at Campbell's field. We will see what president says.