Elder Steven Shattuck: Hola familia, ¡Kawhoot!

Sounds like an adventurous past few days!
Tell rob congrats, and get his bum to write me and tell me how it all went! Haha that's cool he (and Annie) came to California.

So as far as pictures send them to here to this email address. I can only use this account. Pictures and video without sound, I found out DO work.

Haha, yeah as far as the smell... haha we just won't talk about that, but i´m really loving it here. This last week was very tough as every single one of our baptismal dates fell through. It feels like we have been walking forward and moving backward. But that's how it goes sometimes. Anyway, this Sunday it felt like the work turned around. We meet this man, Carlos, who came to church twice without us even teaching him yet, which never happens. So after church on Sunday we snagged him and taught him a lesson and he was so grateful for the missionaries. He was saying he was so glad there are people like us and it gives him a lot of hope to know we have a prophet and all kinds of crazy cool stuff. After the lesson my companion and I were in shock, because that never ever happens! We committed him to be baptized right there. He just called us up today and asked if we could come over and talk to him more about being baptized, which never happens also! We are way blessed to have found him. I have never thought of a person being so ready as him. Pray all goes well.

We have been working with the members a lot. That is really the key here. Even more, the inactive members are great. If we use them to teach, they go around telling people, “hey I got baptized so you should too. When are you going to get baptized?” I don´t ever hear members saying that.. so family you all have a homework assignment. That is each of you give at least 1 reference to the missionaries. I promise you if they accept the missionaries or not you will be blessed. We also had a baptism planned for last Saturday, and we were trying SO hard to make it go through. It was this lady, Andrea. She is very sweet, but I think she is just afraid of water... arg. She studies her scriptures better than us missionaries and knows so much and has a testimony. We can´t figure out how to help her overcome her fear.

Oh what else... It´s just been fun teaching lots of people. Some are just absolutely hilarious. I´ll send a few pictures of some fun stuff around here. Hope they work. Oh, last Saturday we had a zone conference with president Hinckley´s son, Richard Hinckley. That was awesome.

Haaa, oh so our (electrical) power was cut the other day. We've been out for 4 days now. After a few days one of my neighbors was kind enough and noticed we didn't have power and let us hook an extension cord up to her house. It's nice to have fans again at night. One thing that is a blast is when light leaves, we get to teach lessons by candlelight! Lots of fun.

What else is exciting to tell you... Spanish is tough sometimes, and I´m lost a bunch, but that's expected.

Well, yeah just working hard, and every night I go to bed sore and with blisters and headaches from trying to understand everything. But yeah, the work is great! This is really pushing me in every way possible. It's tough and I love it. We are really hoping to move forward as we have been preparing many people. Pray that they all get over their fear to be baptized!
Have a great week and I love you all.