Wahoo! This week has been crazy. .. so many good days, but then again every day had its bad parts too. I guess that really is just how it is. You’re excited one minute and the next... not so much. The good thing I can say is that as dad said, a little good definitely outweighs all the bad. Aw… thank the heavens, or else no one would make it out here.
Where do I even begin? We had zone conference this week. We only have them about every 3 months so everyone tells me my timing is so lucky. I got here with one baptism already under my belt and then got here right in the nick of time for my first zone conference. The Lord is looking out for me. It’s such a huge blessing. So, at the zone conference President really emphasized our baptisms. Apparently, our district is the only one not doing so hot and he let us know about it. ay ay ay He’s so great though. We've only had a couple baptisms in our entire zone for the last year. It’s very frustrating. So, he had us set new goals. The goal for our companionship this month is 4 baptisms. It might not seem like a lot, but that’s half of the baptisms my comp has had in her entire mission (more than half actually). Everyone was shocked when I reported this, but my comp and I felt inspired ha. And we are changing A LOT of things so we can accomplish this goal. We know if we do everything possible to achieve this (and I can assure you that we are), that the Lord is going to do his part. WE KNOW THIS, and we have the faith : ) It’s a great feeling haha. I’m so excited. So far we have 2 baptisms scheduled for March 19th... ta da! The hard thing is that on the 22nd my comp goes home, so it’s going to be a little weird to get this accomplished. But we have no fear.
Which brings me to Juan... He is one of our baptisms for March 19th. He’s so cute, old. He looks exactly like the Latino version of Pres. Hinckley, so you can imagine how much I love him. His wife passed away and I shared with him about gramps and he was really touched. He asked, “You mean I can be with her again?” I assured him yes. And since then he has been the only one to remember about grandpa and care. He keeps saying how sorry he is for my loss, but that I will get to be with him again. No one else has mentioned it or asked how I’m doing. Maybe that’s better, but I like to know people care. He has attended church two times since we found him and came to our baptism and fulfills all the commitments we give him. We got slightly discouraged when one day he couldn’t understand any of the things we were teaching. He’s old yes, and struggles with his memory. We left thinking his baptismal date might fall through. We prayed for him and met with him again the next day and it was night and day difference. I know it was the Lord helping him understand. So now... he will be baptized! That was the first miracle of the week.
Second miracle this week: We really needed to find good investigators. I don’t know if I mentioned but last week we ended up dropping all of our investigators because they refused to act on their faith and come to church. If they don’t come to church three times, they can’t be baptized. Also, it shows if someone is really truly interested, they will do anything possible to come to church. So that’s when we know we have someone good. So we were tracting at the very end of a very non-productive day. We were just around the corner from our house which we walk by every day. Apparently, my comp has never knocked on those doors before. So we knock and knock and no success and then this girl came out of the house. I tell her we're missionaries and we want to share a message with her. She says okay, come in, which is rare. Usually if people will listen, it’s just outside the door. So taken by surprise we go in. Her name is Stefanie. We start to get to know her and she has lost her dad, her mom does hardcore drugs. And I don’t know who, but someone, took her away because she’s a threat to people. Stefanie’s little sister suffers mentally because of her mom’s choices to do these drugs. So she also is in a center to be taken care of. Stefanie lives with her grandpa and is 17 years old. As she’s telling us about her family, you can see she is very strong. She keeps mentioning how everything is okay because God loves her and she has faith in him. Hermana Medina and I just sit and stare in awe. We immediately knew she was someone special.
We, as directed by the spirit, decide it’s best to bring up the Book of Mormon. We only had five minutes before we were going to be late getting home. So short and powerful was our goal. She mentions she reads the Bible everyday and she points to her room and we can see the Bible open in her room. Luckily, it’s the same Bible as ours. What a coincidence. She brings it out and we read to her from her own Bible about the coming forth of another book and tell her about the BOM. We ask if she will read this passage that we marked and pray to know if this book is true. She said she didn’t need to. She said, “I can already feel that it’s true”... whaaa??? Ok! haha but we still want you to pray about it. We invite her to church and she goes in her room to get a pad of paper and pen to write the directions, time and everything. Again, we were taken by surprise. No one ever does that, especially a 17 year old girl. We were impressed. Bad thing is... her grandpa came out and he’s going to be her challenge with this gospel. He is very anti, and won’t let us talk, says we're bad people and all that. Man... it was rough, but we left saying we would come to pick her up for church. When we went to get her... her grandpa answered the door and said she couldn’t come. We were SO SAD! We stopped by to visit her afterwards and she said sorry she couldn’t come. We sat outside with her and her grandpa and tried to teach the restoration. Once again, he caused many problems and we could hardly get a word out. She eventually asked him to leave and he did. Her knowledge of the Bible is both a blessing and not so much. She knows a lot, very smart. She struggles with the idea of God and Christ being two separate beings with bodies, but we´re working on it. We found out she smokes and has been since she was 13. She asks a ton of questions and we told her about baptism and we want to set a date for her... she wanted to know everything. We just laughed and said it’s going to take a while to teach you everything, but we will. Just be patient. And she already knew she had to quit smoking to be baptized. This girl is so special to us already. We love her so much, but she has everything in the world working against her right now.
This is why I ask for your prayers for her. She needs strength against her grandpa, smoking and she takes medication for nervousness and she sleeps all day which she says prevents her from waking up to go to church. She needs help, but she wants to be baptized and she is so strong. We are excited for what she can do, but she needs the Lord’s help. We asked if she also, would prepare for the 19th to be baptized and she said yes. Pray for her that she can learn all that she needs to and can have the strength to do the things she needs to be baptized.
One other thing... I had my first interesting mish experience this week. We were walking past a bar... tons of drunk guys and one of them latches onto me as we're walking. I tried to get him off me but no luck. He just keeps yelling rubio, which is blonde. Ugh! I got sick about it, but he wouldn’t let go. Next thing I know, he kisses me and then runs away. Man alive. Crazy people. I’m grateful nothing worse happened.
I guess that’s all for this week. I’m out of time - gosh dang! But I love you all. I’m so glad to be here. I miss you a ton. Thank you for writing!!!! I love you!!!
Love, Ash
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