December 9, 2013
Area: Broadway 3 North
Companion: Thomas
Well, it seems like you guys had a good week, for the most part, except maybe Angie :P Well, I have had a great week too, but man did it fly by... :) Yes it has been cold, but luckily we still haven't gotten rain during this cold front...whew.
1) Well this week has been pretty full of finding, teaching lessons, and in the rescuing of less active members, but really we haven't taught many less-actives this week because
they weren't home whenever we tried. We actually got our second-highest
number of 'lessons for a week' this week. And, we got 6 new people who we
taught, and almost all of them seem really prepared to hear the gospel
and follow the steps they need to to become a member! While we would knocking on doors, we found a guy and it turns out that his wife is in prison and about to be
deported because she doesn't have papers to be here. He invited us in
and we got to teach him the first part of the Restoration. Sadly we
couldn't teach him since, but we have another appointment set with him
for later this week :) We ended up having 5 lessons just in the last 2
days because we were on exchanges with the Zone Leaders, but instead of
having one companionship in each area, we were all in my area, so we got
to find and teach people in 2 places at once!
2) hahaha, Mom, Lilian is the mom of the family from
Honduras, and now living here. And yes, we have gone back to teach those people, but we
think that Lilian isn't coming to church because her husband doesn't
want her to... We invited her to church and even had a member set up and
she was perfectly fine coming and taking her whole family too, but she
apparently called and cancelled the ride saying her husband would take
her. It's too sad when one spouse is receptive and the other one isn't. It makes it hard for the one that really would like to attend church and find out more:(
And actually, Pablo is a guy that we have been teaching ever since the 1st or 2nd week I've been here. He is a man that has known
about the church for 40 years and has talked with missionaries many
times in the past. We have taught him almost everything, but he still
doesn't feel ready. We continually tell him to read the Book of Mormon
and pray, and come to church and everything, but he still isn't doing
it... He recently started dating a member who is also a divorced person
and he is planning on marrying her, but we just found out about his plan
to move in with her in January because she doesn't mind. : (sadly she
hasn't been to church in about 6-7 months because of work, and moving in together isn't conducive to gospel principles,...). So we
talked to him about the Law of Chastity and asked him to follow that
commandment. We'll have to see if he commits and carries through.
.
3) Well, my Spanish is good enough that I can say
practically everything that I would want to say in a lesson, and even if
I can't say exactly that, I can usually say it in a more round-about
way to make it work out still. I am definitely still learning, and I
know of a ton of stuff that I want to learn, so I know that I will keep
studying it until the end of my mission. Sadly, when we miss Spanish
study, Elder Thomas doesn't want to go back in and study it, so we have
only done that once or twice, and we have missed a lot of Spanish study
time...
This week I have really learned a lot about how
sometimes when you want something to happen, you need to get down on
your knees and ask. The guy that I was talking about whose wife is in
prison, we found him behind the 2nd door we knocked that day :) That
morning I specifically prayed to have us be led to somebody we could
teach because we don't have very many people, then that happened. Now I
ask every morning for our Father to lead us to somebody who we can help
or talk to. The blessings are amazing, and we really haven't had to knock as much--like yesterday,
we had every hour after church scheduled with a lesson. Sadly, some
lessons got cancelled that day or fell through, but we had the thought
to go try some people that weren't ones of our backup lists and it worked out.
We had the opportunity to teach a family of 3 yesterday, and I really
think it is because we showed God that we were willing to plan out what
we would do and pray to be led to people who would hear us.
Another interesting thing that I learned while
studying this week is about the power of faith/priesthood. It is
actually found in Jacob somewhere in the first 4-5 chapters and it says
that if we have faith and hope that something will happen, then ask God
to do it, it will happen. We have the same power as the people in
ancient times and we can say to the mountains "move" and it will happen,
same with basically everything else. When I read that, I just thought
of the Bible videos that are online and the ones that were shown last
night at the Christmas devotional and how I have the same power to do those
miracles--it just depends on my faith and the faith of the one being
healed. :)
Note: here is the link for the 2013 Christmas Devotional that Elder Dye spoke about:
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