Before I write my weekly update i wanted to tell you about something funny that happened this week. I got a letter from a certain Elder Lewis. I was pumped cuz i hadn´t heard from Andy forever and actually thought that he was home already. I opened the letter and we asked me about that earthquake, which i found weird cuz it was over a year ago, and then he ends the letter saying that he almost had a year on the misson....I looked on the back of the letter and it has the date of 2010, from over a year ago. The post service in the Phillipines is really good apparently. So if you see his family let them know i didn´t write their son back cuz i didn´t the letter for an entire year haha.
This week was really good. We´re seeing the fruits of our work, and we feel like the dominos are just starting to fall. We´ve baptized almost all the individual investigators that we had, and we are now able to focus on the families that we´ve found. This last week Naiza, an 11 year old little girl, and Marco were baptized!! We found Naiza knocking on doors and we met her sister and mother, who members from over 20 years ago, but have been inactive for 5 years. We´ve been teaching Naiza and her 8 year old niece, Danhya. They are such sweet girls, although Naiza is kind of bratty sometimes haha, but Danhya is so freaking adorable. We´ve been working with their families and we actually got them to come back to church a couple of times. Hopefully these little girls will be the spark that they need to all come back active and happy into the church. It´s been a big fight with them and i´ve been amazed at how much our own pride can impede our progress in this life, and how powerful Satan´s influence is on those that leave the church. The thought of i´ll come back later, or i´m not worthy to go back, our even using our own embarrassment. All of these are powerful powerful tools that he uses, but if we can recognize these warning signs early we´ll be able to fight him off. it was a perfect example of 2 Nephi 32:8 that says that the evil spirit teaches man that he must not pray, if we ever have those feelings, that is the perfect moment when we NEED to pray or read the scriptures. That way we´ll be able to fight him, and get rid of the natural man.
Marco actually was in church my first Sunday here in Chillán and hasn´t missed a single day of church since. His progress has been kind of slow due to feeling pressured and not understand the why behind the gospel, but teaching the plan of salvation and the plan He has for us and our loved ones really softened his heart and helped him repent and make changes to be able to have something of more value, an eternal family. He got to church because his girlfriend, Berni, brought him. She is sooooo freaking tight and one of my favorite members. She´s a mother of two daughters who were also baptized, but now are less active, but she keeps fighting on. Berni and Marco have plans to get married, but she refused having anything less than a temple marriage and that determination that she has has really helped Marco get a better picture of God´s plan. I baptized Danhya and Elder Weston baptized Naiza and Marco. Like I said the dominos are just falling.
We found a mother, inactive, and her family a few weeks ago. They haven´t missed church since and her son, Benjamin, is getting baptized this Saturday. God has been so merciful in helping us find those who have been prepared for this gospel, and through faith, work, and diligence we´ve seen the fruits and miracles of His hand. Now we´re going to focus on two awesome families that we have. One is Gabriela´s family who we absolutely adore and love. She struggles letting go of her Catholic traditions, but she´s reading the Book of Mormon, and her family has attended church twice. The catholic church has been such an impediment to our work lately. From the very beginning they baptize babies, thus taking away their agency from the get-go, something which is completely against God´s plan. They create these chains of tradition that cause people to reject the truth even when it stares them straight in the face. We taught a woman last night who did that. We had left her a Book of Mormon and answered every one of her doubts using a scripture in the Book of Mormon, which was a huge testimony builder for me of the Book of Mormon, IT´S SO TIGHT!! Anyways we invited her to read and pray about it. She is a very very smart lady and has studied so many things. She said that she read and prayed really desiring to know if it was true. She said that she received an answer and knows in her heart that what we teach is true, and she thanked us for what we had taught her, calling us Angels, but that she was not able to leave her traditions of being catholic. She brought up examples of false doctrine and horrible histories of her church, baby baptism, the Sacred Cruzades, the sacred inquisitions (don´t know how to spell that) which both are examples of horrible torture and murder done by members of that church. But even after knowing all those things she looked us straight in the face and said that her traditions of being Catholic are sooo strong that she could never leave it. I seriously looked at her and saw somebody in chains. Elder Weston and I afterwards talked about how blessed we are to have modern revelation and scripture revealed for our days to put an end to all false doctrine and answer the questions that so many of these people have. They find the answers through the restored Gospel, but fear to follow those answers and it´s so sad to see sometimes. Anyways....
Another family that we have is awesome. Berni´s sister, Ana Maria, was intrigued by what we taught, and Berni set up an appointment with them and we´ve taught them ever since. The father, Ricardo, wants good principles for his 3 daughters, Francisca, Fernanada, and Javiera. They´ve progressed slowly due to not being able to meet with them very much, but last week they began reading the Book of Mormon, and they attended church yesterday after we made them a tight breakfast. We went over and made them french toast, mom would have been so proud of me haha. All those years of observing her cooking has helped me become a semi able chef. Anyways we are really excited for the future, and are going to keep working hard and I know that we´re going to see miracles this next month!
I love you guys tons, have fun in that summer sun, be good, Mckay prep those girls for me for when i get back!
Tanner
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