January 11, 2010-Hola

hey guys,
ok so i want to thank you all for your emails this week and especially for your prayers. i´ve definately been able to feel them. its been a really great week for elder mortensen and i here in alto san lorenzo. so i guess i´ll just start telling you about it.
so on like tuesday, mortensen and i went to visit maria and ester. ester already has the baptismal date for the 16th like you know. she was progressing really well and kept telling me how she knows that the book of mormon and this church are true. its so awesome to be able to see the change she has had since we first started teaching her...a woman who was afraid to pray in front of us. but yeah so we were teaching them something, and i started talking to maria about why she wouldn´t get baptized also. we´ve tried a bunch of times but she always told us that she had already been baptized so she didn´t need to be baptized again. this time wasn´t really any different, but as we were talking, i told her that it was possible to be baptized again if its not done properly. she was just like, ¨you can be baptized more than one time?¨ so that was seriously so awesome for me to hear, because i pulled out a scripture in acts 19. in the first couple of scriptures of chapter 19 it talks about a group of people who had to be baptized a second time because it wasn´t done correctly. so i shared that with her and after we explained it, i asked her to be baptized. she told us that she would. so we not have maria and ester being baptized this saturday. mortensen and i are both pretty stoked. they both have really strong testimonies of the book of mormon and know that the church is true. i can´t wait for saturday honestly.
ok so its seriously been so awesome having mortensen as my comp. we get along really well (i think its because we´re both pretty weird and outgoing with people. even though i would definately say that i´m the weirder of us 2 hahah). he speaks pretty well. its a little tougher for him to understand everything, but we´ve been working really hard together.
but yeah, mom, thanks for writing me this week as usual. you told me in your letter that keeley broke her wrist. when you see her can you be sure to tell her what a bummer that is for me. tell her that i hope she feels better and that the surgery goes well. she´ll definately be in my prayers. thank you also for telling me about everything going on back at home. i´d like to go to the spanish ward when i get home and just listen to everyone. dad, it means alot that you wrote me this week. thanks for keeping me updated on sports. be sure to tell me what happens with chargers next week. the lakers better keep tearing it up too. don´t work too hard on your days off. you gotta find some time to have fun too. sean, dude i´ll bet you´re way stoked to be back at school now. but yeah bro, trabaja duro, divertete, y quiero que sepas que te quiero (wow that was actually really tough for me because i´m used to talking in vos hahah). paige, araya told me that you are starting dance or something. how does my old comp know these things and your own brother doesn´t even know! that sounds like a lot of fun though. be sure to tell me what you think of it. bridg, one of the dogs that we have in our pension got taken away (of course it was my favorite one...there was a white one and a bunch of black and brown ones. my favorite was the white one and they gave it away). but yeah you´ll have to see the video of it because i still look at it every once in a while and it still makes me laugh. i think thats just because i´m a dork though hahah.
alright well thank you all again for everything. i love you all. keep having fun and working hard. until next week...
con cariño,
elder ryan hall