Carnival In Aruba!

Hey everybody! Sorry I wasn't able to email yesterday because it was a holiday here in Aruba. So here in Aruba, there is this thing called Carnival. Pretty much it's just the whole country throwing a gigantic party with parades and activities every night for like 6 weeks (It started at the beginning of the year and ended yesterday) Carnival is absolutely ridiculous with drunkenness and wild partying. I'm sure this was something that prophets like Nephi saw in the future and described as "Wicked traditions of their fathers" and things like that. So this week was especially crazy and there was a parade that went right in front of our house so my companion and I were evacuated to Oranjestad for 3 days and served in the Oranjestad elders area for a while. But so yesterday was pretty much a hangover holiday for the whole island, so our Internet shop wasn't open.

This week we received some bad news from Kevin. He lives with his mom, because he is a poor college student, and she told him this week that we cannot come over and teach him anymore, and that it's not ok with her for him to go to church on Sunday. He wants to be baptized and knows the church is true, but his mom is directly against anything that has to do with this church. He doesn't need his moms permission because he is like 22, but as long as he is living with his mom he can't have anything to do with us. Kevin has made so much sacrifice to align his life with the commandments, and he quit his job so that he could come to church every Sunday and be baptized. He has so much faith, but he just cannot do it in the situation he is in right now. So until he able to move out or something, we cannot go see him anymore. We were devastated when we called him and he told us this, but hopefully one day he will enter the waters of baptism.

In better news Zone Conference this week was AWESOME as usual. What especially stuck out for me,and what I learned most was how important the Spirit is. It is super super important that we WRITE whenever we hear and feel the Spirit. When we have spiritual experiences and we write them down we are showing the Lord that we cherish what he has given us and we are more likely to receive more spiritual light. Elder Richard G Scott I think it was said something like this. "Knowledge carefully recorded is knowledge available in time of need." And we will at some point in our life need to draw from spiritual experiences we have had in the past, and if we don't write them down we won't likely remember them in the future.

Transfers are coming up at the end of this week, but I don't know anything yet, so we will see what happens next week.

I can't send any pictures this week because I am writing this on an iPad at the senior couples house, so next week I can send some.

I hope everyone has a great week

Elder Porritt