Getting to Know the Rasmussens

First Leadership Council Meeting with President and Hermana Rasmussen

Hello!!

Well this week was a great one!

President Rasmussen is really great!! And his wife is also very awesome! We got to see them during our leadership council meeting this week, where they read us their notes from the new Mission President Training they had with the 1st Presidency and Quorum of the 12. THOSE are some spectacular notes! The Second Coming is very close and now more than ever we need great missionaries and steadfast members.

They were pretty emotional and excited to be here. President served in the Dominican Republic when it first opened up to missionary service. They have 4 children and 7 grandchildren (if I remember right...). His wife doesn't speak anything of Spanish, but she is learning REALLY fast! you can see the gift of tongues working in the both of them! Very happy people and you can see his energy, the first thing he said to us was that he was SO happy to be a missionary once again. I am excited to work with him for this last transfer.

So we have gotten word from J that he should be coming back in the middle of this month!! Which is awesome! We have decided there are a couple things we should have taught him better so we are going to get right to work on that when he gets back and maybe he can get baptized before too long!

E now has a baptismal date for the 29th of August. He is preparing to enter the university so he is in some preparation courses that take up a lot of his time and have a way of cancelling our visits.. but he told us "on the 29th of August I will get baptized", so we are working with that! He is doing well and we are finally getting routine visits with him now!

His brother in law E now has a baptismal date for the 8th of August! So that is really awesome and hopefully we can help him out there!

D will be getting baptized most likely the 19th of this month. It was going to be this coming Sunday but we are in the process of changing it to the 19th just to be better prepared. She is just so excited to be baptized, it is fun to teach her. :)

We visited O in the hospital this week. We visited his wife at their home earlier in the week and she said that he keeps talking about us and misses us. He brought his Book of Mormon to the hospital with his pamphlets and a pass along card with our number on it. He is such an awesome guy, and what we have taught him has really impacted him, I think real quick he is going to be back home and progressing for baptism.

From your house building photos: Is that a pretty common style of home for the people there where you are?

it depends on what part you live in. But that is a more humble style of home, but common in that part of town.

What was the best thing about your week?

hmm... getting to know President and Hermana Rasmussen!

What was the craziest/funniest thing you saw or experienced this week?

I had a rather interesting encounter with a man in the marketplace today... This man when he saw me just started going off about how he wants a girlfriend that is white, "white like you" he said to me, and he just keep going on and on about how I am very white and how he is of a darker skin color, and that he wants a white girlfriend, and all the saleswomen around us were watching and dying of laughter... I just stood there listening until he finally walked away. You meet fun people in the marketplace... haha

Well, all is going well! This week I am really starting to pick up the pace and get cracking! My plans are to set up baptismal dates for every weekend of August, so hopefully we can get that set up!

Have a good week!! Love you!!

Elder Russell