Week Three in Dunwoody

     This was a good week. I can see God's hand in this work. He is helping me grow, and helping the work in this area grow. I can tell that I am truly getting lost in the work. The things in the mission are now far more important to me than things of the world. I am realizing what is important in life. My relationship with God is growing. My knowledge of him and his nature is growing. I can feel myself changing. I can feel the atonement working in my life. I just need to work harder, and trust in the Lord with ALL of my heart. I need to trust him that things back home are going to be taken care of. I need to trust him and have faith that he will take care of me and the people that I love back home. I know that if I can do that that I can get further lost in the work and grow even more.

     Things with Joe and Junior haven't changed much. Joe is still smoking, and Junior is smoking less. I have other people that I would really like to talk about right now, so I am going to majority of this letter talking about them. I want to talk about a family. This family is called the Roldan family. Everyone in the family except the 21 year old daughter who attends BYU is not a member. The daughter joined the Church two years ago. She is a very very strong member now and is encouraging her family to investigate the Church and become members. He family has been through 10 sets of missionaries since the daughter joined. We are now the eleventh set. I have faith that we are going to be the difference in this family's life.
     The Mother, Father, Son, and youngest Daughter are not members. The Son and Daughter are both very active in every program of the church. The son even goes to early morning seminary. The Roldan family is one of the most active families in the ward. They come to Church every Sunday without fail. The Mother and Father don't go to any other hours of Church besides sacrament. The children stay for all three hours.  This family is amazing and would make great members of the Church. They are such a strong and loving family.
     The Mother and Father both have a Catholic background. We have been able to answer a lot of questions for them that the Catholic religion just has not been able to answer. Yesterday we got them to come to Sunday school for the first time ever! They loved it so much. We met with them later that night, and they told us, "No other missionaries have ever got us to do the things that you guys have helped us do. Thank you for pushing us. I can tell that something is different about you two." They have a lot of questions about the Church. I love answering questions for people. I feel like there is not one question that this Church doesn't have an answer too. I love the hard questions because they push me to find an answer. We have been able to answer all of their questions so far. I can't wait to see what else they are going to throw at us in the next meeting.
      I know that this family is special. God has seriously played a HUGE role in their lives. He cares for this family as he does every family. This family is prepared. I am so excited to see what happens with them.

     Being in the "Bible Belt" I have really gotten to know the Bible well. I know the Bible quite a bit better than most people out here. I have grown a deep love for the Bible, especially the New testament. The Bible absolutely testifies of the truthfulness of this Church. There is not one thing that does not support our religion. Our Church uses every teaching in the Bible to its fullness! I wish that people could just realize that! If you truly read the Bible (not just one part of it) and study it (not just one part of it) then you will come to the conclusion that there was an Apostasy, and there was a need for a Restoration. It is so clear in every page of the Bible.

     Elder Grassley's birthday was on Saturday. We had a good time. I took him out to this great burger place and talked and shared stories. He is a great kid. We get along so well. His head is still bothering him but we are going to figure it out.
He is a great missionary and a hard worker.

     Well I hope to hear from anyone that reads this over the next week. My time is up, I have got to go. I love you all so so much!

-Elder Ryan Romero

The holidays are flying by. It feels like Halloween was yesterday. Thanksgiving was better than Halloween. It is a holiday that they let you celebrate on your mission unlike Halloween. No one in the ward I am in now invited us to do anything for Thanksgiving, so we drove down to Decatur and celebrated it with my old ward. It was a very good Thanksgiving dinner. The Mallory's cooked a feast. We had all the Thanksgiving specialties, and some things I'd rather not try again. Chitlings, they are disgusting, never eat them. Haha. I got to see Glovia again and got to say goodbye to her. I am going to miss her so much.   I am going to miss the Mallory's. Especially brother Mallory and his southern accent. He can't pronounce anything right. Christmas is "Krimas" street is "skreet" straight is "skraight". Gosh I love that man.

Graffiti in a tunnel...not too shabby!

Elders at the last Zone Conference

Elder Romero and Sister Mallory

Elder Romero and Brother Mallory

Elder Romero and Glovia, a convert from Decatur

     The work in Dunwoody is alright. The difference in openness to our message due to geographical location and financial situations is becoming more and more apparent to me. People here are very wealthy. It seems like the more wealthy neighborhoods won't listen to our message at all. They open the door, give a sigh, and shut the door. It is very different from the poorer areas. The poorer areas the people at least listen to you. We have been doing most of our tracting in the poorer areas of Dunwoody. There aren't many, so we have pretty much covered all of it already. However, the Lord has blessed us for our efforts.
      We have two investigators with baptismal dates. Their names are Joe, and Junior. They are neighbors and good friends. We found them both within the last week. Joe is the father of one of our former investigators. He is a Jehovah's Witness but doesn't know too much about the religion. He is a very kind man and you can tell he really cares about Elder Grassley and I. He had many good questions. Questions that other religions just couldn't give him answers to. He loved the story about the restoration and Book of Mormon. Junior is a Vietnam vet. Very kind and funny country boy. Junior loves to talk. He loves to share stories with us and we love listening. He is a very kind man, as he would say, "Junior tries to be good to everyone."
      We were teaching Junior before we were teaching Joe. We talked to Junior about the restoration and the history of the Church. A couple days later we met with Joe and started teaching him. In the lesson with Joe we were explaining how Satan tries to mislead and confuse. While God's path is clear and simple. As we were talking about this Junior busts through the door furious. He was coming to tell Joe to never meet with us. He didn't know that we were meeting with Joe at that very moment. Junior looks at us very angrily and says, "You didn't tell me that you had multiple wives. I am not doing that. I don't want anything to do with you guys anymore." After he said that I turned to Joe and said, "See how Satan misleads?" Luckily we were there to straighten things out and calm Junior down. After teaching them and explaining things to them we invited them to both be baptized together on December 16. They both have a problem smoking so they said that they are going to help each other quit so they can get baptized and they are going to go to Church together. It was an amazing lesson that I could really see the hand of God in.

      Elder Grassley is great. He reminds me a lot of my good friend Ian Kelley. Haha. For those of you that know Ian that may seem really weird... But they are very similar. He has been having quite a few health problems though. He has diabetes and has been having really bad headaches since the MTC. We are going to the doctor today to hopefully figure everything out. Him and I get along great. We were into a lot of the same T.V. shows back home. He has been filling me in on what has been going on since I have been gone. We have a very similar sense of humor too. He is a great kid. I am trying my hardest to train him the best I can. I think I am doing a pretty good job. It is weird being in the position I am in when I feel like I was in his shoes yesterday... Sometimes I don't feel strong enough. I still struggle with things just as he does. Being a trainer I have been trying hard to stay strong for him.

      Well that is about all I have to say for today. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I love you all so much. I miss you all so much.

-Elder Ryan Romero.