He loves reading

Hey thanks for the email. It's really good to hear the updates on everything and to see the pictures.Ya, I have a bit of time in the mornings and at lunch sometimes to practice on the keyboard. I tried to make a little morning schedule so I could work out time to practice sightreading Hymns I don't know. It's kinda worked out so far haha. And ya Hilario should have been baptized last week but he hadn't set up an appointment with the Bishop yet. We talked with him last night and decided on Either November 30 or Dec. 7. He's doing really good though; we gave him a True to the Faith book and he loves it, he reads through all of the topics that he doesn't know. Lastnight we brought our friend Brother Alonzo with us. This guy is awesome I have to tell ya about him. He was baptized last year one Dec 22 (I know the date because he tells everyone he meets). He had lived a pretty bad life before then and made some really big changes. He used to ride his church 8 miles every Sunday and he's really solid now. He moved into our ward temporarily because he had lost his job. We're lucky to have him. When we came over to his place last week (which was a tiny room in his brother's house) it was all really clean and he had a little bed and a small desk in there with The Book of Mormon, The Bible, the Doctrine and convenants and the Pearl of Great Price and the Gospel Principles manuel all spread out perfectly on his desk. He loves reading them. When we took him out teaching with us this week he was--at first--a little scared because he's still really new and hadn't ever taught before. He wrote down notes and printed out papers from Lds.org to share with the people we were teaching. It was awesome. He's just a good humble guy I wish y'all could meet him. 

We did some service at a lady's house who was recently widowed in the ward. She had a backyard with a bunch of overgrown trees that were getting a little crazy so I had to take the chance to climb all of the trees and cut down any branch that needed cut. It was a really fun. I love service.

On Sunday we had dinner with an awesome family--the Stays. Brother Stay had invited some friends from school over. They were a chinese couple. Their names were Feng (or Ben) and Ruya. They were awesome. We taught them the restoration and at one point Ben was telling us about a little spiritual experience he had that led him to marry his wife. He saw her in his class at grad school in China and he heard something say to him "this is your wife." As he was telling this story it would have been pretty cool or romantic or whatever but his wife was making this face like she just ate a snail or something and was like, "Ya I didn't even know him, it is very weird!" they were a funny couple haha. They really liked the message though. We gave them a Book of Mormon and Brother and Sister Stay are going over to their place soon to talk to them about it again.

Well, Thanks for the email. I love y'all! have a good week! Share the Gospel with EVERYONE!

Elder Russell