Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee hardest week of my mission so far haha. We contacted over 100 people and found one new investigator this week...and we think he was high on weed when we met him, but he accepted an invitation to baptism, so it´s all good!! haha Elder Conley and I basically went insane and were just saying the most random things to eachother to keep eachother sane, walking up and down hills aalll day, and i mean all day, will make you go a little crazy! Oh yeah we cut down bamboo plants with a butter knife for service and chopped wood all morning one day, we´ve had some interesting things happen to us lately.
The earthquake in Japan was insane! Waves hit California pretty good, and hit Dichato here, where there was a tsunami last year and half the city was destroyed, so the people there aren´t too happy. The President of Chile flew over us and went to visit Dichato which is right next to Tomé. We weren´t affected at all by the tsunami, but the Chileans just all went insane again and crowded all the stores, I´m gaining a stronger testimony of food storage every time there´s a natural disaster here. The people here just buy food for the day, so I´m pretty thankful for Prophets that have counceled us to store up for hard times. We did have 8 Elders sleeping on our house one night cuz they evacuated the center of Tomé, which is on the coast. We all shared 4 mattresses and woke up with broken backs, but it was fun to have a bunch of us there. Our house is tiny though, so i don´t know how we did it. I also found out today that our house where we live is the oldest one in the mission, so that will help you understand where i´m living haha I love it.
Elder conley´s doing really well. We´ve bonded even more this last week, and last night he told me his life´s story haha he´s a really funny kid, especially when it gets later at night and we´re both beat from work. Thankfully the Lord has blessed us with miracles with Wenceslao, and Claudia also came to church yesterday. Wenceslao told us that he´s 100% committed to getting baptized and has changed so much when we teach him the commandments. Where before he would make excuses to why he couldn´t complete, he now asks us questions to better help him understand how to complete, and commits to everything on the spot. It´s amazing to see how much the spirit can change the heart of a person in so short a time. Claudia is a bit more confusing. She´s really really quiet and has a hard time expressing herself, so it´s been hard to teach her according to what she needs. We did an transfer with the zone leaders, so they could go see her and they found out that she had a lot of doubts about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. It didn´t help that she had a friend there who used to be a member and was telling her so much anti mormon crap while the Elders were there. Elder Conley told me that Elder Bastow (our zone leader) just turned to her friend and told her to leave Claudia alone and let her make her own decisions, she didn´t say one word after that haha. We´ve challenged her to read and pray every day about that book, and come to church. She came so we´re hoping that means she really has a desire to be bapitized and complete with Christ. If so we´re going to have two baptisms this week!!! Pray that nothing happens to impede Wenceslao from being baptized, and that Claudia can have an answer to her doubts, and she may invite the spirit into her life.
We really need to find new investigators, so that´s going to be our main focus this week, aside from Wenceslao and Claudia, we´re being obedient and working hard, so we have hope that God will bless us here shortly, we just gotta keep going. It´s hard sometimes, and I get down on myself and on the people every now and then, but i´ve been blessed with great companions who have always helped me keep going, and I´ve been able to help them, so it´s a pretty good deal we got goin on here ha.
Thanks for all your love and support, keep being good, and like Elder Rowley said, READ, PRAY, and GO TO CHURCH. It´s what we teach here, LOMA, Leer, Orar, Meditar, y Asistir, it´s the key to unlocking the revelation and guidance of the spirit.
love you all tons,
Elder Tanner