Goodbye Heredia, and first week in Paso Ancho

763 Elder Acuña in the kitty kat alley way haha

My sad good-bye-Elder-Acuña face, but he didn't get the message

Addition to the dog album...

Not in the cat alley way, just a nice random cat

Our favorite cat in the cat alley way (and how we found Alan, who's gonna get baptized soon) Oh man I miss that street full of cats!

Freeway selfie!

a nice daytime picture of the Mojados (the ghetto in our area)

Hello!

Ok, this emails gonna be about the past 2 weeks, since I couldn't write this last week.

My last week with Elder Acuña was the bomb. He is such a great missionary, and together we grew so much. We had an awesome week with lots of miracles :) And when I got the call that I had changes, I felt super let down. Even though I knew and know that it was god's will, it was really a bummer. Especially because I talked with him today and 4 of our investigators that we were working with are gonna get baptized this month! So I'll be missing the baptismal services :(.

But I also had a pretty great week here in my new area, Paso Ancho. We're in the heart of San Jose, here! Pure cityscape. After having 2 huge areas it is pretty weird being able to walk from corner to corner of our area here in like 40 minutes. But it's cool :) The ward is pretty big here, like 100 members, and they are just the best. I've only got a week here but I feel nice and pampered! hahaha I just feel like part of the family here. We've been working a lot with a few investigators, but one family has been really special this week..The dad, is a member who recently came back to the church with his wife and his son who's not a member. They've been in the church for about 5 months now, but the father has been struggling with a really difficult smoking addiction. We went with him my first day and I didn't know much of the situation, but later in the week we passed by and taught with the Hermanas. He said that he had dropped from 20 cigarettes every day down to 15, but that he didn't know how he was going to be able to stop in order to be worthy to baptize his son the 16th of this month. We shared about their future sealing in the temple to become an eternal family the blessings that they would receive as they did it, and the spirit touched all of our hearts. The dad testified, crying, that he wanted that and that he was ready to give up his addiction. The sisters went with him on Saturday and he said that he was doing well, and when we went there yesterday, he broke to us some AMAZING news! 4 DAYS after that spiritual moment with him, he dropped down to only smoking 3 cigarettes on Sunday! He's going to be ready before this week ends to stop smoking in total so that he can baptize his son, and they can start to prepare for their sealing. They are such a special family :) And it warms my heart to think about the blessing that they're about to receive. The coolest thing? He is a luchador (fighter)! No, not the coolest thing, but it is pretty awesome. :)

I love to be a missionary so much. It's such a special feeling to be an instrument in the Lord's hand :)

I love you all so much! Hope you have a great week! Pamper your missionaries! It's the bomb! hahaha.

-Elder Henry

Answering Mom:
I live in a nice house in a normal area. Ward is awesome I love them all a ton :) We don't have much (going on as far as investigators) in this area but it's got a bunch of potential and the ward is super pumped because the hermanas (Hermana Ortiz and Hermana Ponce) just came!

     PS Working with hermanas in the ward is the best thing ever! Super fun and there's a lot of cool stuff that we can do together.

     I'm doing super good. :)