"Pero esta cara tan bonita"

Hey everyone hope you're all doing well! This week felt like it lasted an eternity, but in the end looking back it was a great week! 

Last week my email was real short and I am sure you weren't to happy about it Mom ;) So this week I decided to make it a little better! 

First of all I can't believe we have made it to 2024! That is wild! 2023 was a year spent serving and I will never regret it. To kick off the year 2024 we ate dinner at a members home who has a family full of non members. It was probably the funniest night of my entire life. Soriel (the member) has a father who is normally not very kind to us. He isn't rude, but he just doesn't care to talk to us. Well on December 31st he was a little drunk and the dude was having A BLAST! He didn't stop talking for 2 straight hours. Part of the conversation was him telling us how he met his wife. She was walking by him and he saw her and thought to himself "pero wow esta cara tan bonita" which means "but wow this pretty face". So he decided to follow her to a colmado while she bought Plantains, the most Dominican thing ever haha. He later explained to us that he had a GF at the time but he didn't care cause she was in Florida. The whole night was a movie and so fun. To end the night he begged us to stay until 12 but we explained we can't and he felt pretty down about that. Anyways a really fun night. 

A highlight from this week is a guy we contacted named Johnathen. A few weeks back we were walking home and some guy was knocking on a door to be opened. It was his business and he got locked inside and needed someone to open the door from the outside. I personally thought he looked crazy, but my comp said we needed to help him. So we did and then that was it. We went on our way. Well about a week later we were walking home again at night and some mini van was following us for a second. I thought it was weird and told my comp we should walk faster. My comp decided to stop and see who it was. SAME GUY! We said hi and then went on with our night. Well 2 nights ago we got home and decided to go visit a friend of ours named Mileidy. As I said the prayer to leave this guys face popped into my head. We decided to go find him. We found him and learned that his name is Johnathen. We had a great first contact and talked about what we do as missionaries and how we would love to help him get to know his Savior Jesus Christ. I am super excited to keep teaching him and I hope he can progress. If you could all pray for Johnathen Rodríguez that would be great. 

Overall it was a great week. Hope you guys are all doing well! Keep reading the Book of Mormon especially this year with the Come Follow Me:) Love you all! 

Elder Wilde