¡Veinte uno!

My awesome family and friends!

THANK YOU for all the birthday wishes, I felt like my email was overloaded with all of the emails and everything that everyone sent me. It was so good to hear what’s going on in your lives and well... Just everything so thank you! Because I enjoyed reading all your emails and listening to the audio clips (thanks Holly and Curt) so much this email will have to be shorter sorry.

But first, to answer a few questions:

As of right now I don’t think I will be extending my mission. I have been thinking a lot about it, and I feel like I want to be home to be with Collin and the family more before he leaves on his mission and everything, so as of right now my official release date will be the 25^th of June.

As for the housing situation when I get back to BYU, the plan is that I am going to live with Logan in the house that his parents own in Provo. So you all don’t have to worry about making a deposit or anything like that because I just have to figure everything out with Logan when I get back, and from what he has emailed me, that’s still the plan. Orrin also wants to live with us, but I don’t know what Logan’s parents have in mind, if his brothers are still going to be there in the house and what not, basically Logan, Orrin and I have to figure things out when we get back this summer.

As for everything else you shared with me, thanks so much and I’m sorry I can’t respond to everybody, but I read all your emails. Tell Grandma and Grandpa hi for me as I got their Christmas letter this past week! Also, I fasted for Kelsey yesterday, and I hope everything improves with her! Good Luck Curt on this conference you are going to be doing! Oh, and thanks my main bro Collin for all the updates on your life and college. Sounds like your roommate is insane, and I’m glad he won’t be there with you anymore. And all I have to say man is that you have a big project on your hands to get me back into shape when I get home because here in my house we have a bar with concrete filled cans on each end to work out with… good ole Guatemalan style lifting. So pretty much I don’t have any muscle anymore haha.

Thanks mom for your email as well, it’s pretty crazy to reflect on how fast life has gone by since my birth and everything. I couldn’t ask for a better mom who always gives me words of encouragement.

Well as for my week, to summarize it up, it was definitely better week. I’ve slowly seen some changes in my companion for the better where he has been more willing to be obedient and open his mouth more to contact with me. (He used to get really angry at me when I would contact people on the street telling me that we were wasting our time). So yes we have been working better together and contacting more and actually finding quite a few new people to teach. In fact, yesterday we did an attack in our area where we went with 20 young men that are preparing to go on missions in the stake to contact in our area, and now we have a butt ton of references to work with this upcoming week which is exciting. Progress is still being made with Urbano and Elsa and the divorce, the only thing now is that the wife wants part of Urbano’s insurance that he has set aside for his family which could hold up things there, but we are hoping that everything works out so that Urbano can at least get baptized in March. There are a few cool people we are working with which I which I could explain, but for a lack of time I won’t be able to. One of our investigators we are working with is a 22 year old named Miguel. He is a really cool guy with tons of problems because he has a huge problem with drinking. He is addicted to alcohol and gets wasted out of his mind. Because of that his wife has left him with his daughter and he can barely find work. He lives literally in a one room shack with one light bulb in the middle of the room. The only furniture he has is his bed. We went and visited him this past week and when we got there he was drunk out of his mind, and when we sat down to talk to him he just started balling, telling us about his problems. It really broke my heart to see that all because of an addiction to alcohol. Alcohol just destroys lives, I hate it. The worst part about the whole thing is that his problems ad addiction are so bad that he couldn’t even come to church this week, and it’s been a real struggle to try to help him. On the other side of things we have just been finding new people, so I hope next week I will have better news to report. This past week we have been dealing with a problem elder in our zone that does not want to be obedient and has gotten to the point where the bishop and stake president have gotten involved and it’s not been pretty. I had to go do divisions with him for a day and try to help out the situation. There was also a training meeting for all the trainers and new missionaries in the mountains of our mission and the assistants forgot to let us know that Elder Bejar and I had to talk and give workshops in the training meeting, so we showed up and President Ruiz told us we each had 20 -25 minutes, so we both had to improvise training workshops on the spot but it turned out well haha. But most of all, my week was good, we got out and did some good work, I’ve worked out things better with my comp and we have a lot of good stuff set up for us this week. Thanks for the birthday wishes! I can’t believe I am turning 21, I feel old now haha! I don’t have anything planned for tomorrow so it’s just gonna be a normal day of work but it’s alright haha.

Love you all tons, and I forgot my camera AGAIN o next week for sure I will have to send some pictures!

-Elder Henderson