"This is Halloween"

In my book, Halloween is the best time of the year.  The air is crisp and refreshing.  Candy surrounds you in every store, and you have the excuse of dressing up as nasty as you'd like and people will actually complement you instead of telling you to take a bath.  Each year it gives me great pleasure, and the wonderful thing about Tijuana is that it has such an american influence that everybody here celebrates it.  ...well, not everybody, but close enough.  Our neighbors decked out their house with all the trimmings (music from "Nightmare before Christmas included).  It was awesome, but at the same time... very difficult to sleep with.  All this past week Hna. Cabrera and I have been singing, "This is Halloween, this is Halloween.... I am Jack!  The Pumpkin King..."

Sadly, as a representative of Jesus Christ I couldn't go all out on a costume this year like I usually do.  Contacting in the streets would not be as effective with a painted face, ratted up hair, and blood-splattered clothes.  So my companion and I did the classic missionary costume and switched our name-tags.  In the morning, during our studies, we put on fake mustaches.  And our District meeting was livened up a bit with candy and costumes. Actual Halloween night, due to the locals tendency to drink alcoholic beverages in large quantities, all the missionaries of Tijuana had to be in their houses at 6pm.... which gave me plenty of time to eat the giant bag of chocolate candy that I bought the P-day before...

As for actual mission work.  Agua Caliente was not very kind to me when I first got here.  They didn't have any potential baptismal dates, ninguna de los investigadores estaban progresando, and we had many hours just walking around hoping to find someone to contact because no one was home.  But about two weeks ago a miracle happened.  We met Miguel and his family.  It's a long story that I will have to write another day but to put things short, Miguel needed us.  He has had a lot of problems in his life but now wants to make a change.  Said that we came like angels sent to save him and his family.  Now he, his wife and two oldest daughters have baptism dates.  A whole family!!!  I am so excited for them.  We have seen grand changes in just these two weeks of teaching them.  With the gospel, their lives are becoming better each day.