Busy Boy.

Elder Edwards has been working his butt of lately (10 baptisms this week!) so he hasn't had time to email everyone who emails him. Don't feel bad if you haven't heard from him in a while. Each week he is required to email his Mission President so Matt has decided to just copy and paste those emails for us to keep up on his work. Here is this weeks update:

Buenos tardes. I have been working on my spanish lately. I plan to speak it fluently before I make it home. I was planning on calling you guys about the same time as last year, maybe an hour earlier. This year I realized how awesome Thanksgiving is and how when you dont know what day it was until it passes its kind of a sad holiday. We didnt have our phone that day so the next day when we got it back we had recieved a bunch of Happy thanksgivings texts. Looks like everyone else knew what day it was. 

   This week is going to be CRAZY!!! This whole transfer we have been working with all of our people and planning their baptisms for the last week of the Transfer. Also our wedding, due to a poorly organized government, was delayed until tomorrow. As of right now we have 10 baptism that are all pretty solid for the end of this week. One baptism is kinda stressful trying to do everything, 2 is really stressful and exhausting, 3 is a killer. 10 is going to be a nightmare. Pray for us please... we are going to need it!

    Why do you have to get a cancer screenning? that sounds kinda scary.. It was good to hear that Katie got her letter I was hoping she was gonna like it. Thanks for saving my emails. You shouldve told me that. I wouldve been in more effort. I will email janet right now. Also I got the bank info finally i will send that back soon. 

        This week I took your challenge and I have been working to improve my morning and night time prayers. I have started praying for each investigator by name and taking each of their problems one at a time. I have really seen that the Holy Ghost will direct our prayers and also he will inlighted us about problems or doubts they have that we dont know about. This has been a valuable lesson to learn and I will definitely continue to improve on this. (to mission pres)

Testimony.

I´d like to share the story of one of our investigator with you. Last week we marked her with a wedding and baptism date and the whole family was excited. Two days latter we returned to talk to them again but her spouse wasn't there. We gave her a family proclamation and then she started to tell us about how she found out about the church.  She use to be a strong member of the Adventist church until one day she felt like it wasn't completely true. She said that everyday after that she prayed to God to find a true church that was right for her and her husband. After a while missionaries showed up in Relva and she felt like she needed to talk to them. She was too shy to stop them in the street so she just continued to pray and pray that they would show up at her house. One day she saw them walking behind her house and they were on the trail to pass by her front door. She waited but they never knocked. After that she was heart broken. The next day her husband was contacted by two Elders in the street and they showed up at her house, finally, and taught the message of the restored gospel.

When I heard this story my testimony that God is preparing people and putting them in our paths everyday grew and I know that we truly can find these people.

Love you all and hope all is well! Elder Edwards

Long Overdue Updates.

See additional post below. Sorry for the infrequent updates. Elder Edwards has been so busy that emails are shorter and less frequent. He is doing great and we couldn't be more proud of him. Can't believe it's already been 9 months!!!

 "Hello meus pais. This week was another good one. I took that one day plane flight to Praia because the President wanted me to attend a specialized leadership training. It was way good and made me feel like some sort of business man flying around like that. My companion bleeds blacks! My new companion is a fellow highland high rammer and we have been representing for the SLC and getting work done! This week Elder Ensign showed up and he is in my district. He is in the city right next to mine (Cova figuera) and he seemed to be in culture shock at district meeting. He is strugglying with the language but he has a huge testimony so he´ll be fine. And the area that we´re in nobody speaks portuguese. It is crazy to hear about all the new missionaries and changes in the mission work. I´m glad that I am going to be here to help them lead all out. Its not too good to hear the utes are sucking it up. Hope all is well with you. With love, Elder Edwards Oct. 28th"

October 21.

Hello my family. Its good to hear that halloween is here again. Im not gonna lie I forgot about that holiday, it doesnt actually exist here.. The bad news for the week is that I am in Sao filipe again so I cant send pictures this week. This week was the end of the transfer and once again, I am getting a new companion but luckily I am going to stay here in Relva another transfer. There is an active volcano and I do live at thew bottom of it. I really hope it explodes that would be awesome see. This mission is super weird though. Tomorrow I am going to take a plane flight to Praia, Santiago to pick up my new companion and then the next day Im gonna take another plane to make it back to fogo. This will be the first time in my life having a back to back plane trip in just 2 days.It was good to hear from you and about how life is going. I hope all stays well. Love Elder. PS GO UTES!

To Assomada And Back Again.

Ola. This week was a little bit crazy, a little bit bumpy and a lot a bit rainy but when it was all said and done we finished off this week with three baptisms. One of them was definitely the biggest successes I have all all of my mission. In my first transfer of my mission we meet an awesome college student who was close to finishing his senoir year. We was really converted and knew that this church was true but he would never take the next step to being baptized because his girl friend would break up with him and he needed her computer for college. We didnt know what to do with him and he basically was at a stand still. After 5 months of missionaries working with him and 7 different missionaries we finally helped him to take that next step and to be baptized and he asked for me to baptize him. Me going back to Assomada was a very rare thing to have happen in the mission. Now that all is said and done I know that he was the reason I had to go back there and it was great to have that experience! 
Love Elder Edwards

Picture Post.

Late.

This email was from two weeks ago and I forgot to post it. Sorry!

 I did get a new companion this transfer. I actually got two. Their names are Elder Parkinson from Layton and Elder Olsen from Boise. They both are pretty cool guys but they're sticks in the mud... anyways..  This next week is going to be CRAZY! Tomorrow morning I'm going back to my old area (assomada) to help out a missionary whose companion has to come have an interview with the President. Then Wednesday we have Zone conference in Praia and then Thursday I'm going back up to Assomada for Zone conference there and then on Friday our investigators are getting married!!! On saturday they, with two other people, are going to get baptized. I don't actually think that we are going to have a lot of time to teach this week but none the less it should be awesome!!  I hope that all is going well. Love you tons. Elder Edwards.

PS go to the Church website, LDS.org and watch the Cape Verde movie I think it's called terra de luz. Land of light in english but most of the movie is filmed in the area I am in right now and it shows where we baptized in the ocean its way sweet