It was so great to talk to Dereck on Mothers Day. He sounded so good...and grown up! He said it was because he has had a sore throat for the past week. Things are going really well for him. He is super excited as they have been able to commit the Herrera father to be baptized. He is scheduled for this Saturday. When I asked him what his favorite part of his mission has been, he answered without hesitation that he has loved working with this family. It sounds like they have spent quite a lot of time with them and have grown quite attached to them. They have also been working with a lady named Wendy who is really a great lady.
Transfers are scheduled for this week and he really wants to stay. We will see I suppose. His P-Day's have been changed to Wednesdays instead of Mondays, so we won't know what happens until then.
We tried to pin him down on some details of his day -- so here is a typical day -- He gets up at 6:30 eats, exercises, has personal study time, and than companionship study and is done by 10:00 a.m. Then they go tract, do appointments, plan their week, etc. They always have dinner appointments with the members, unless they have investigator dinners. So I know he is getting fed.
One funny thing that he told us was that he has learned to love hot sauce. He would always tease Scott about dumping tobasco sauce on everything when we went out to eat. We would dare Scott to eat something with all kinds of sauce on it for a quarter ... of course he would, and than he would try to get Dereck to, there was no way that he was going to try it. So to hear him say that he loves it now is music to Scott's ears.
For my Mother's Day gift he set the phone down and played a song on the piano -- it was one of the primary songs about moms. I know the song, I just don't remember the name of it. It was so sweet -- I was laughing, crying at the same time. Although it was not perfect it was a perfect present. He was happy to hear that it made me cry. He said that he had made a video of him playing the song with the other elders singing, but couldn't find the SD card anywhere in the house. Hopefully he will find it and send on it's way.
I guess that about wraps it up ... how many more days until Christmas?
He finally sent me some new pictures in his last email. They were able to take the Herrera family and Wendy to the Mesa temple and do a visitor tour. It sounded like it was a fantastic opportunity.