I love getting everyone's emails, between the boys fishin, and hearing about the things at home, it’s really fun to know what’s going on with you guys!
This week was a hard one, but a good one as well. With all the celebrations it was practically impossible to do any door contacts, and also all the new people that we’ve been finding lately were so busy with their families and stuff, that we weren’t able to get a return appointment with any of them this week. The good thing is that it gave us more opportunities to visit less active families and also part member families. We even scheduled a couple of baptism dates with people that have been attending forever with their families, but for whatever reason haven’t been baptized yet. One of them is an older lady named Carmen. Her son and daughter in law were baptized about three years ago, and were super active in the ward. He was the ward mission leader, and she taught the class that my comp and I now teach. They had a ton of trials and problems, which caused them to fall into old bad habits and lose hope. They’ve recently returned to church, and want to recover what they’ve lost. Apparently tons of missionaries have tried to baptize the mother, Carmen, but none have been able to. We taught a lesson about baptism, and it didn’t seem to have much effect on her, but near the end of the visit, she turned to me and asked me when I would be leaving Molina. I was obviously hesitant to give an answer seeing as I told everyone I would be leaving about two weeks ago haha, but said around the middle of October. She said, ¨I want you to baptize me before you leave. ¨ We put the date on her son’s birthday, the 6th of October, and she’s preparing for that date. Last night her son, Juan Carlos, asked her if she was sure she wanted to be baptized, and she responded ¨God’s been telling me for a while that I need to do it, and I already told you that I’m going to do it, what other answer do you want? We all laughed at that answer.
We’re also preparing a nine year old kid, David, for the 3rd of October, the day of General Conference (woohoo!!!). His dad, Ditermo, is preparing to baptize him. They went inactive for a while and he started to drink and smoke again, but wants to leave these things behind. It’s kind of a contentious family, so we’re going to need to help them learn how to really love each other. For example we asked David who he wanted to baptize him, and he chose me. I told him that it was his father’s right and duty to baptize him, but he did not want him to do it. We talked for a while and finally at the end he said that his dad could do it. It kind of made me sad to see a boy so reluctant to participate with his dad in something so special. We’re going to have a family night tonight with their family and another family in the ward, hopefully it’ll help them come more together as a family.
We have a few more people, and some really great ones, that we found last week that we hope to be able to find this week to continue teaching them. We had a few really powerful lessons and had them really excited about the church and the Book of Mormon, so hopefully after this long weekend of partying they haven’t lost that. Missionary work is such a delicate thing, it’s ridiculous. Sometimes the weight of having someone’s salvation over our shoulders is really heavy and hard to bear, and many times I feel so unworthy to have this missionary badge on my chest, but it amazes me that the Lord does His work even through such small and unworthy instruments, and the work brings such great rewards and blessings when we accomplish our goals with them, and see the blessings come into their lives.
We decided on Saturday to take the morning to organize a lot of things here that have fallen in disorder. We’ve been lazy in a lot of aspects in the work, mainly the paperwork and doing our teaching reports on those we teach, this is a paper we fill out for future elders that will be here, so they know the progress of those that we’ve taught, their trials, doubts, experiences, so that they may know how to help them right away when they get here. We organized those we’re teaching into groups of focus, for those that have more possibilities to progress, and we’ve a lot of goals to help them continue, and help us have the spirit. I feel optimistic, but we’ll definitely need divine help to complete with all these things.
We’re going to have a big week, full of contacting and looking for new people to teach, and trying to find all those that we’ve already taught. It will require a miracle to get this sector progressing again, and a lot of prayers coming from your way will help. Pray that we may be able to find these people again, and that they’ll be excited and ready to continue in their progress.
Thanks for all your support (and packages that are coming YEAH!!) keep up the things you’re all doing up there. I seriously am super proud to be part of this family, yáll are awesome haha. Have a great week, do work, and have fun!!! Love you,
Tanner