Hola Elder

He's a Semi-Teutonic Baptizing Elder of Action.

Dear Family,

This has been a weird week. It started off bizarrely warm, and then
the temperature plunged towards freezing (50s/60s) after it rained
Thursday. Verily, I have become quite acclimatized to the California
summer.

Transfer calls came: Elder Jenson is leaving, I am staying, and my
companion will be Elder Perry (I already have his theme song written
and everything). Also we'll be on bike. This marks my 6th consecutive
transfer in Whittier, or my 8th total.

Speaking of transfers, a couple of oddities: (a) this transfer will
only be 5 weeks (to avoid Christmas Day), and (b) my new ministerial
certificate says that I will expire on October 15. I'm just guessing
that they just rounded to the next full transfer for that date, though
if that happens to be the case then I will have served a 25 month
mission. We'll see what happens.

So, proselyting...

We found a guy named Keith. We contacted him on the street a couple
weeks ago. In ages past he dated a member for 3 years and went to
church with her. He came to church this week, and he brought two dozen
donuts, because he told us there would be donuts whether they were
provided or not. He's quite the character, to say the least.

We were able to teach Dawn with her mother early in the week, which
went really well, but then things in the household exploded. Once
again we are left without words and much idea of what to do.

Tito... is Tito. We were able to sit down with him a couple times this
week. His initial sense of resolve with regards to learning has seemed
to inexplicably crumble, and as a result our visits with him became
quite bizarre, to say the least (unproductive, to say a word more).

James is doing good. Somehow, even though we couldn't meet with him at
all this week, he was able to obtain permission from his parents to go
ahead with the baptism. He also went to mutual this week and also
church. Yesterday, we had dinner at the bishop's house, and the bishop
invited him over. It was good. The only hiccup now is that he's going
to China for a couple weeks, which I guess is as good of an excuse as
any.

Electronically,
Elder West