Hellooooo Family...
Como estan? gracias por sus emails! Hope you're all doing well, sounds like you all continue to live the dream.
So, like I said, sounds like you're all doing good! Thanks for your emails. Sorry my email last week was so short. It makes me so happy that you all like to feed the missionaries so much hahaha. But for reals! I know you are blessing their lives so much, and that makes me happy. So, how has this week been? Well...the challenges CONTINUE! But it's all good. I love being full field, I love the ward I'm in, I love my companion/how our companionship works...but there have been struggles in the work. But I'm still fully confident that we'll have 3 baptisms in May, just trying to get over some roadblocks.
Ok I feel like I have two weeks to recap. I'll try to make this good. I will just tell you some of the highlights of the last couple weeks.
I don't know if I ever mentioned that a few weeks back we had the managing director of the missionary department come visit us in the VC. and it was SO good. It was super cool, because he talked a lot about how missionary work is changing. And how in 5 years, all missionaries will be spending several hours a day proselyting online. And it was so cool, because he was all about helping us to catch the vision of the "big picture" of missionary work, and how we are pioneering these efforts, because we're doing online missionary work already. So, it was so cool, he just helped us to see the whole thing. And he told us, which I've heard before, about how the primary reason that the internet was invented was to preach the gospel. And how even like several years back, the first presidency was talking to him about how they needed to get missionaries online. It was so cool. And it was SWEET, because I realized that it was totally a fulfillment of my patriarchal blessing! In my blessing, it talks about how I "will see many changes in the church...that will bless the lives of members and allow the church to progress" and how I need to follow the counsel of the latter day prophet. Pretty sweet, no? Anyways, so that was a highlight.
Also, last week, we had a SWEET lesson with Dora, Salvador, and their sons. If you'll remember, they are the family of four who we started teaching sister cottrell's first week here. They are just super busy. But we got them to come to the visitor's center! So, we got them there. And Salvador started off being his debating, doubting self...as we were listening to the Christus, he was flipping through his bible trying to find verses he could bring up to us. Hahaha. but then, we watched God's Plan, and they totally changed! Oh my gosh, it was so good. Afterwards, the mom started crying, adn the two sons (who are 19 and 21) just like put their arms around her and it was SO sweet. After God's Plan, they said that we could visit them the very next day! As opposed to like, every other week, like we had been seeing them. I can't express to you how much I love this family...they are SO awesome. The way sister cottrell and I put it, is that they're like the family that you would love to play a card game with. Hahaha...they're SO fun, and always joking around and super friendly. But, they're also super busy! We were so close to getting the boys to come to church, but they had to work. So, we're still working with them, hoping to get them involved. Either way, they're an awesome family, and the mom Dora is so prepared, and I know the rest of them could shortly follow.
We had another miracle this past week. We had been helping the ward to update the ward directory a few weeks back, and could never find this one guy, Pedro Sanchez. And none of us knew who he was. A few days back, we felt the prompting to go visit him. So we went, and we get to his house and he's there! And he doesn't actually even live there any more, he was just visiting! And I was expecting some random middle aged guy, no, pedro is this solid 19 year old guy that had been preparing to serve a mission! He converted a few years back and hadn't been to church in a year. Well, he came to a lesson with us the very next day, showed up in a white shirt and dress pants, ready to go, so solid. It was so cool to see how it was the perfect timing.
What else...well, this past week, I feel like I became very aware of how real the spirit is. And, I also became very aware of how real the opposite of the spirit is. This past week, we were on exchanges with sister falcon, and we went to cesar velducea's house (the 9 year old convert). It was weird, he's been acting CRAZY rebellious and has just been like a huge stress, we don't know how to help him. Anyways, afterwards, we were talking about it, and sister falcon and I had both gotten the impression during the lesson that something was off, and that they needed to have a priesthood blessing over their home. So we're going to do that, and see if it helps. Then, right after, we visited Rosalinda's house. So, Rosalinda's family has a weird situation right now...her mom we taught like "secretly" one time, (it's complicated), and her dad is super catolico. So we go to the house, and the dad just started working again. The mom had told me that he hadn't been working for 3 years. So I said "It must be good to be working again" and he was like "yeah...but what do you mean 'again'?" and I was super confused, and he kept asking me what I meant, etc etc, and finally was like "I just wasnt' working for like 2 weeks, I don't know why you said that." and I was like "huh?" and I told him "sorry, must've gotten you mixed up with someone else". anyways, so during our visit, sister cottrell hands me the phone, and she had texted on it "do you feel like we need to leave?" and I was like "yeah."...it was so weird, he got like super defensive and scary and it was SO weird. It was just crazy that we like both got that impression that we had to go. And then, when we left, we ran into a recent convert and had a great visit with her. So...the spirit is real, and it's opposite as well. We gotta be super in tune to both of them.
Que mas...well, if I could describe this transfer in two words, it would be: Mujeres Jovenes. We're teaching tons of young women right now, which is fun because we get to do a lot of the teaching in english. We had a great lesson w/ nadia and claudia this past week. We started teaching them, and they were like NOT feeling it, because their friend was over and you could tell they didn't want to open up in front of her. So we start teaching the, and I ask Nadia a question and she gave like some cop out answer, and you could tell she was just not into it. So I actually stopped her, and I was like "Is something up? You seem distracted." and then she totally opened up and told us about how she's been stressing out about her future, her boyfriend, etc. And it was so cool, because the scripture that is in Alma 42:29 came to my mind, and then I looked down, and my scriptures were already opened to it. So we read that scripture, and then it turned into an awesome lesson about how the scriptures can help us during stressful times, and we ended up committing both of them to read every day, and we committed their friend to baptism! So cool. Teach people, not lessons, folks! It paid off so much.
So, I told you how two sundays ago we had given talks/musical number in church, and we also taught a really fun lesson in Young Women. I talked about how we don't have to be perfect to share our testimonies, and that when we share our testimonies, our insecurities/doubts will go away. The YW lesson was super fun, we talked about how they can respect/honor the priesthood w/ the guys their age, and we did different activities with them. I feel like the ward trusts us more now, but they also have super high expectations for us too, I feel like. The whole issue about us having bad manners at dinner got resolved...we gave them cookies, and they told us they had been talking about other elders that had been doing things like that in the past. But then, the members have started giving us more suggestions I feel like. Yesterday was SUPER stressful at church. No one showed up to church, then Cesar (9 yr old) showed up but was acting crazy and wasn't listening to us or anyone (so the primary leaders had to talk to us about it), then we had offered to help in the library, but had to hand out invitations as well, then we had to help out with a lesson, etc. etc, and then the members continued to give us suggestions. Which, were all very well intentioned, but it was just an incredibly stressful sunday, with no one showing up on top of that :( but it's all good. I think the ward is trusting us more, and that they're giving us suggestions, responsibilities is a sign of that. We have a good relationship with them.
Anyways, I must be off. I'll talk to you this Sunday! The work goes on...disappointments, miracles, the whole lot of it. I love you all! It's worth it! Love, Sister Fors
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