The Dream Way to End the Mission

This week was very very successful and eventful. It´s hard to know where to start. I´ll start off with the not so spiritual part. Last night for ¨P-Day Eve¨ We got all our mattresses together and put them upstairs, cuz our downstairs is freezing, and we watched a church movie on Elder Dalton´s DVD player. It was fun, and nice and warm, a nice change to our refrigerator-like downstairs. Today with the zone of Ñuble and Chillán we went out to the countryside and went paint balling. We had a good time, I got a nice shot to the chin, but besides that no damage done. We played in a huge field with trees, big rocks, rivers, and even sheep running through the field with us. I died several times, and every time I play paintball I become more convinced that if I go to war I won´t last too long haha. We had a good time then went out to lunch and ate Chorillana! My favorite food here. Now to the better part....
Elder Weston and I have really gotten into a groove together and are seeing crazy results. We´re seeing things in our sector that I´ve never seen in my mission, and we believe it´s cuz we´re 100% focused in what we´re doing and the spirit has guided us in a way I’ve never seen before. Our lessons, where we should go when we´re in the street, the invitations we do, everything is just going well. When we invite people, whether it be to baptism or to church, or to live a commandment, the people are just accepting everything, and we´re seeing complete families coming to church.
First of all Ricardo was baptized!!! He was a miracle baptism that came to us without having to do much effort. Like I´ve written before he had already attended church 3 times before being taught by us. He accepted every commitment and was actually completing the commandments before we taught them, because he ahs a friend in the church who has explained a lot of things to him. He had already thrown out his coffee and tea when we taught him the word of wisdom, so he was a golden investigator. The other elders also had two baptisms of a mother and her daughter who they found by a miracle. Elder Sorensen was riding his bike and just wanted to go exploring one day. They took a dirt rode for about 20 minutes and found a random house in the forest. The sisters had to travel 10 kilometers by foot, and by hitchhiking, but they got to church. Since then they haven´t missed and were baptized on their 3rd attendance at church. God’s been blessing us with little miracles like that all week.
We´re going to have two more baptisms this week. One is Naiza and the other is her niece, Dania. Naiza is 11 and so it counts for the mission, but Dania´s mother is a member and she´s 8 so it´s a baptism for the ward, but it´s still a baptism!! They´ll actually be baptized on Friday at 7:30 so that Dania´s mom, who works on Sundays, can attend. They´re two very sweet and very intelligent little girls. Our only worry is that their families won´t support them enough to keep them active. Their entire family are members, but all inactive. They include returned missionaries as well, which is such a crappy thing to find on the mission. I can´t imagine going inactive after my mission. It´s something so strong that just impacts your life and I’d be ashamed to let any convert see that I, after teaching them the gospel, was not following it myself. We just feel embarrassed for that missionary who goes inactive every time we meet one. Anyways, the baptism will be sweet, and the good thing is we finally got Naiza´s mom to come to church with her yesterday. She has been inactive for 5 years and it´s amazing how much it´s affected her and the family. We have to make sure we are always reading, praying, and going to church. They´re such little things, but it makes all the difference.
We had another miracle on Sunday. Marco, an investigator that we found when I first got here, has been attending church without missing for 8 weeks now. His girlfriend is a member, but he´s been right there reading, praying, and attending, but he wasn´t progressing. We went over to Berni´s house (his girlfriend) and we asked him what was going on, how he was feeling, and why he wasn´t baptized yet. He told us that he had been reading, and from church he´s gotten more and more sure that baptism is something that he needs cuz he feels like the church is the best place to be a better person. We asked him what he was waiting for then, and he told us that he just needed to make the decision and that he´d do it soon. We told him that we are going to plan a baptismal service just for him on the 19th of this month, and asked if he was willing to prepare for that date. He said yes, and the spirit was so strong, it wasn´t anything pressured, it was a natural conversation between friends and we were able to help him feel that he needs to take this step. So long story short he´s finally taking those steps that he needs in order to be baptized.
To continue the list of miracles, we found a mother who attended our church when she was little with her family. She has a son who´s 9 years old and loves religion. We taught them on Saturday, talked about baptism and eternal families, gave them Books of Mormon, and invited them to church. They accepted it all and LOVED church. We went over afterward and watched the Restoration movie with them and they said they felt something really special. They´re progressing really well and they should both be baptized this month!
We had invited several other families and everyone said that they were coming. In all we were hoping for 17 investigators in church, 14 of which have baptismal dates for this month. We had 10 in church, 9 of which have baptismal dates, something that I’ve never seen in the mission, and the most amazing part is that we were disappointed cuz we knew that we have the potential to see much more than that. One of our best families that we are teaching have already attended once, but didin´t come yesterday. We were bummed about that, but we had a huge blessing with another family. Hermana Berni gave us the reference of her sister´s family, who has all accepted a date for baptism, and we´ve taught several times. We knew that the hardest thing would be to get them to church. 10 o´clock came and they weren´t there. About halfway through sacrament meeting they should up and heard the testimonies of everyone, including mine, and stayed for Sunday school. They left really impressed and Berni´s sister had tears in her eyes during testimony meeting. We´re seeing miracles and are teaching sooo many people right now. I know that God is blessing us, and it´s amazing to see the miracles that he can accomplish when we are willing to work and complete with what He asks of us. The last little miracle that we saw last night before ending the week was doing contacts. It was late and we were tired. We had done a lot of contacts and had found a lot of new investigators already. We decided that before going to our last appointment we would knock 3 doors just to be diligent and obedient. The second house we knocked was a success. A man came out and asked us what we wanted. We told him that we were missionaries there to share a message with his family. He looked at us and shut the door. we thought he had rejected us, but then he came out with keys to open the gate and let us in. We talked for a while and they made us some herbal tea, cuz I have a little cold right now. They have a little 6-month-old baby, and are recently married. We talked about God´s plan for the families and how baptism is the door that allows us to return to God clean from all our sins. The father, Mario, was really interested and after we offered the final prayer to leave (cuz we could only talk for about 10 minutes cuz we had to go to another appointment) he sat there for a second and looked at us and said I want you guys to come back and teach my family about your church. It was a little testimony builder and a lesson for us that when we don´t want to do something that we know is right like contacting late at night or doing that last home teaching visit, it is Satan working with us cuz there´s someone who needs our help. If we had just gone to the appointment instead of knocking those two doors we never would have found that great family.
All in all we are seeing amazing things and having a great time working here. It´s the dream way to end the mission. The best ward, great investigators, and the Elders in the zone are all way awesome. I know for sure that if we are just obedient and exercise faith, God will bless us with miracles, and many times they´ll be greater than we even expect. Elder Weston and I were walking home last night and talking about how amazing God is and wondering how we were being so greatly blessed. I know that it all comes down to our desires, our attitude, and our faith. God will do the rest. He is a co-worker WITH us in this His work, and he is pulling for us. Like Paul said, who can be against us if God is for us? That´s not a perfect quotation, but I love that scripture and I know it´s true.
I hope you guys have a great great week of SUMMER WOOHOOO!! Be good, have fun, and keep up the good life that we live.
Love you tons,
Tanner