Monday, July 19th

Alright, well. This week has been pretty normal. Nothing too exciting has happened to me this week. Elder Anderson and I continue to work our tails off. The Lord certainly is blessing us as we do everything that we can. Either this weekend or the following, we should have 4 baptisms (Juan's kids).

So, yesterday we were planning on having about 8 people that would be coming to church for sure. Well....we had 0. That was tough. I know that there's only so much we can do, but I wonder what we did wrong, or how we can fix that. We had been averaging about 4-5 people at church the last few weeks before, but for whatever reason, it just didn't happen this week.

On Friday, we helped out the the Laredo Youth Conference. We went and did service for a few hours getting stuff ready for the hurricane victims. We sorted clothes and food and all sorts of things. It was a good opportunity to serve. It was also nice to get out of the hot Laredo sun for a few hours.

One day this last week we didn't do the best at planning lessons close together. Well...we figured we ended up biking over 30 miles that day. I got a little sunburned...not too bad.

I've really realized how much I love the Book of Mormon. I've now read it 4 or 5 times on the mission, and am wanting to finish is at least once more before I come home. I swear that it must change every time that I read it, because I find new things every time that I read it that apply specifically to the challenges I'm facing at the time. How grateful I am for the scriptures in my life.

Well, I'm attaching a few pictures from the flooding. Some people's homes were flooded. When I took these pictures was a few hours before we actually got evacuated.

The first picture is America. She's one of Juan's kids.

The next picture is the flooding up on the street by our house.

The next picture is of a gazebo in a park that got flooded.

The last picture shows where the river normally is. Do you see the trees in the middle of the river? That's the bank usually...So, it was really high up.

So, one more quick story. President and Sister Trayner came to church up in Laredo yesterday, and Sister Trayner asked me if Dave had written me since they had gotten down here. I told them that Dave hasn't written me ever... They thought that was funny. I love you all...even though some of you don't write me :)

Love,

Elder John H. Meservy