Hey!!
It's nice to hear from everyone. This week has been SUPER hot like always, and it's been pretty humid lately as well. This is actually my first legitimate mission Preparation Day so that is kind of exciting. We've been keeping real busy and I'm definitely trying to learn the language. I can still understand a lot of what people say, but I struggle with speaking it. No worries though...it will come!!! I definitely get humbled all the time when I realize how much I have to learn and how much better I can be. It's good though because it always keeps me closer to the Savior and realizing why I'm here.
We've been doing a lot of service for people lately, yard work and digging up cactuses and such. That's definitely a new experience and I'm pretty sure I still have spines in my hand from that. Apparently gloves don't do any good because they just go straight through! But it was fun and it's nice to get a little workout every once in a while.
We've had some exciting things happen this past week! We've set baptismal dates for 2 of our investigators, so we should be having some baptisms in the next 2-3 weeks. I'm way excited, and it's amazing to see the Lord's hand in everything. Some people He has prepared so well and they just accept most everything we teach. This lady we visited last night, Hermana Amparo, is just an amazing person who is so spiritually ready. We had a lesson about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and everything went so smoothly. She felt the Spirit strongly, and agrees that she needs to get baptized. The only thing with setting baptismal dates is that everyone always thinks they need more time and that they need to know more. So we're helping and talking to a lot of people and it's been quite interesting - it changes all the time. We were out on the street talking to people and almost every single one flat out rejected us and didn't give us a second. But I just enjoyed it, because they're the ones that are missing out, and it's my job to just be enthusiastic and loving. There's no point in getting all depressed and discouraged, because it's not us as individuals they are rejecting - it's the Savior and His Gospel.
We heard a really inspiring poem yesterday at a member's house. It talked about a missionary who was getting discouraged and tired walking around, knocking doors all day and getting rejected time after time. It talked about when this missionary had a dream that he was talking to the Savior. He would talk about something that was rough for him, and the Savior would console him and tell him what he went through. Although our hands may hurt from knocking doors, the Savior's did from having nails pounded through His palm and wrist. Our backs may hurt from our backpacks, but Christ carried the burden of the cross He would die on - apart from the suffering of every sin, sickness, or temptation that anyone would ever have. We may not always enjoy our companion, but Christ was rejected and despised all his life - He was constantly surrounded by people that were mocking and spitting on Him. It was just an amazing poem that helped me have a better perspective about everything we do. I have no right to ever complain about anything I do or anything I go through. I am so blessed and I'm carrying a message of joy and happiness! There's no better thing, and there's no better place to be.
We're still working hard on finding new investigators and just talking to more people in general. We have a car and because someone else had to use my companion's bike, we aren't really doing any biking. I'd like to because it's nice to get exercise, but as of now we don't really have a choice. Working out is interesting here, because we have tile floor everywhere in our house and it can be tough to even do push-ups and sit-ups and things. But I've been doing great and working out whenever I have time, and in whatever way I can.
My companion is great and we're getting along really well. We have an apartment, and we get fed by the members almost every single night. The members are all gracious and welcoming, and we're starting to work more with them, which is definitely what we need to do. When we eat dinners with them, we're starting to commit them to come up with 10 names of family and friends that they know and pray about them to know which ones to visit or introduce. 60% of converts come through members so we need to be spending our time accordingly. It's wise to not be spending all day tracting to find maybe one or two people, when you can benefit so much from just spending a little time with members. We're working on really setting a good example for the members here so they will trust us with teaching their family and friends. They're all great, and we'll see how everything works out.
We don't spend as much time outside as we'd like to because we have to take a full hour for training and a full hour for Spanish study outside of our Personal and Companionship studies. We're trying to be super productive with our remaining time, and everything has been staying busy.
We're actually having a few days of training this week, and the AP's, President and his wife are all coming to train our zone (Wednesday through Friday). So we're not going to have hardly any time to get everything done. We are excited because they're going to be going out with us for some appointments and we're setting up a lot.
Mornings have been sweet - sometime we meet up with missionaries to do soccer, this morning we played tennis. All the missionaries down here are way tight because we're so isolated from everyone else. Another thing about this area is that people stay here for a long time so they get to know each other real well.
It's been great though! I'm loving everything, and working hard!
No comments:
Post a Comment