I am just going to start from the beginning of my week because that will be easiest. As you know, last Monday we went cruising the forests of South America. It was crazy: we found some creepy stuff. haha You’ll hear more about that later. I don’t have time to explain or write about it. We found the river and had a good time. It has been soooo ridiculously hot this week. I can’t even function. More on that later too.
Adventures at the River!
ME in play clothes! First time in forever.... that was fun!Tuesday we went to district meeting in Durazno to meet with our leaders. They talked about attitude and developing Christ-like attributes to overcome the trials of the mission and to move forward with the work and get our goals for baptisms for the month. Ours is four. The mission goal is a baptism a week. Wouldn’t that be fantastic? President expects nothing but the greatest from us. So we decided if we say anything less than four every month we are questioning the Lord’s goal for us and pretty much saying we know what he commands of us isn’t possible… hence, our goal is four. I don’t know if you remember but we had nothing last Monday… nothing… I left district meeting feeling like I had so much to change and knew that my attitude had to improve. I thought about that the whole two hour ride home. I knew I had to trust in the Lord. There was nothing else to do but change my attitude and get to work. My comp and I talked and decided if we were going to reach the Lord’s goal for four baptisms, we had better be doing everything to stay worthy so he could bless us with that. We immediately put into action several goals and went out to work for the day.
Miracle Number One... That same day we had a meeting with a little girl we have been teaching. Her grandma and aunt got baptized, but they don’t really understand very well. That doesn’t matter, she does. We invited her to be baptized and she accepted. The thing preventing her was her dad’s permission. We talked to him, got it and she will be baptized this Saturday... whoa! My changed attitude, faith in the Lord and a new resolve to be even more obedient was the cause of an immediate blessing. The Lord is WAITING to bless us and we just have to take that one step and obey his commandments and immediately the blessings come. This… my friends is proof.
That night we had our ward FHE with a scripture scavenger hunt and had a blast. It was awesome. Everyone said how much fun they had and if we kept doing stuff like that, the whole city would be coming. It’s amazing how much the little stuff means to these people. They are easily pleased and don’t need much. It’s a Christ-like attribute the people of Uruguay are born with. It amazes me. Just wait until they see what we are doing this week: water balloon volleyball. It’ll be a blast. The whole ward is preparing for it.
Noemi, a member's daughter... I love this little girl! She is adorable.Miracle Number Two... We have a bunch of investigators just no one who was progressing. We decided we needed to use the resources (people) we already had to get our baptism goal. So Jakalin (an eternal investigator) has decided to be baptized too and she finally came to church on Sunday and LOVED it! She will be baptized on the 25th we hope, right after we have a wedding for her. We are trying to help her get all the papers together. They have to announce it in the paper three times and we are trusting in the Lord that everything can be done in time for the baptism. Keep her in your prayers. While doing all this we met the guy who writes the newspaper here and has his own radio talk show. We talked to him and he has agreed to announce whatever we want, whenever we want, on his radio station. We just gotta give him the announcements and get the gospel word spread. Little do we know the success that would come in our other lessons. We taught A LOT OF THEM this week.
Miracle Number Three... We decided to visit Augustin. He said it felt like such a long time since he had seen us…one day! He said we needed to have church more often because he could already (on Wednesday) feel Satan’s temptations all around him. Wow! Not even members want to have church more often. He’s great. We had a lesson with him, taught him the five steps we have to do here in this life: faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost and endure to the end and we invited him to get baptized. There were and are so many reasons for him to have said no, but… he just looked at us and said it sounded great and that the decisions he was making in life now were leading him right to baptism. Oh man, he’s so awesome. We told him to be baptized he had to be living the law of chastity. We taught that to him and he agreed to live it. Right now he and his girlfriend are living in two different tents until they can figure something else out.
Augustin and Jessica with me and my compMiracle Number Four... We went to visit Augustin again and Jessica was there. She said she had agreed to live the law of chastity. I felt the need to ask her why she was praying, reading, even living the law of chastity if she had no intention of getting baptized. I asked what was stopping her. She just said when she first came to church, it was hard because she had never done that in her entire life. We bore testimonies from the bottom of our souls about how hard the gospel is, but how worth it it is. Lots of tears were shed and at the end we felt the need to invite her to be baptized as well, and you know what? She accepted. It was a huge change in her, not only that but before she refused to go to church. She went the first week that we met her and after that she didn’t want anything to do with it. But we asked her if she would come on Sunday and she said yes without hesitation and she was there with Augustin before we even got there. She’s opening up so much more to us. Anyway, we had to talk to president last night about the whole situation and he wants us to wait to baptize them both. First time ever in history that president wants us to wait to baptize someone if they already meet the requirements and are willing. But he wants to see the fruits of his repentance which we are already seeing. Since we met him, just like Yuri, he has come to every activity and every meeting. He is changing. He’s living the gospel and he’s changing. It’s incredible. Our bishop said that they would have to be married and not just separated. They told him that and he just said… if that’s what I need to do to be baptized, that’s what I will do. Oh my gosh, so incredible! I couldn’t believe his response. What an example to all of us. So... the 25th of February is probably not going to happen. Getting married here takes forever just to do the civil stuff. President made me promise and make a covenant with my Heavenly Father that we would still reach our goal for four baptisms this month even though Augustin and Jessica won’t be two of the baptisms. Oh man. I have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of investigators, we just gotta work with them. It’s been a pretty intense week.
Just a little side note. Thursday night... we couldn’t sleep, it was so hot we literally could not sleep. We got ice in bags and went outside to see if it would be better out there, it was little bit but still... then our ice melted and we were dying. We hung out outside, then saw a lightning storm start up. To get a better view we were going to walk out the front gate. Welp, as I’m walking through our grapevines, I see a giant spider web. The web was massive and the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, with the grossest looking spider inside. P.S. he makes this web every night because one morning at 5 a.m. when we left for district meeting, I walked INTO the web. Ew! After we went back inside, we laid on our tile floor, the only sense of relief we could find, but even then we couldn’t sleep. It was ridiculous. Just to give you an idea of how miserable the heat is here... there you go.
We have a surprise double zone conference this week. Yay! That means four hours to district meeting on Tuesday and on Thursday. We get to go to another state. We never do this. We think maybe they are going to introduce the new mission president to everyone. We only meet as a zone every other transfer and have interviews every other transfer. We alternate, but we had interviews this change and now we are having zone conference. Hmmm, weird. We will see. Once again, we won’t get any sleep this week. Yay! Also, we have our entire week planned out with appointments again. We don’t have enough time to handle all the work we have. Whoa.
The mission really teaches you to trust in the Lord. It’s amazing though, as humans, how many times we have to learn the same lesson over and over again before it sticks. The scriptures have been my saving grace this week: 1 Samuel 15 and Alma 26. Powerful stuff. I’m learning to depend on the Book of Mormon more and more. It’s so great. I love this mission! For every ounce of hardship it is... it’s worth it. Like dad said, a little good will outweigh the bad. And it’s so true. I love being able to serve and be a tool in the Lord’s work. It is a magnificent calling and I don’t want it to end. I’ll just end with a quote.
"In reality, you can never love the Savior until you have given to serve and labor among his people." That’s from President Monson. I hope everyone is well. I love you more than words can express. The gospel is true and Heavenly Father is there. Love, Ash
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