First things first I GOT THE PACKAGE!! Thanks so much for that awesome gift of the Liahona´s. I was so pumped to give them away and I hardly have any left. it was awesome to read your guys´ testimonies and Chileans love pictures so they´ve all loved the ones of our family. It was a testimony builder for me to see all those beautiful temples, and reading about what they represent. I love the church, the restoration, and God and His plan. It´s all so perfect. Oh and by the way the food and the beanie were cool too haha tell Chelsi I´ve been using the beanie everyday here cuz it´s pretty dang cold right now. It was also really weird thinking that that was my last package, don´t send anymore cuz they might not get here in time! How weird is that?!
This week was actually very mediocre for Elder Weston and I, but the sad part is that we led the zone in almost all the numbers. We are very happy with the zone this month though, compared to last month, where only my sector, Elder Dalton´s sector (the other zone leader in our house) and one more sector baptized for a total of 7 in the zone ( 6 of which came from those living in our house). This month we have 6 baptisms already, none of which are from our house, and we have 12 possibilities for baptism this upcoming week, 7 of which are from our house. We´re happy that the rest of the zone is having success, and that everyone´s getting to enjoy a piece of this awesome puzzle that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray that all those 12 possibilites, including Gabriela and her family, may be baptized this week.
As I said in my last email, we called President Humphrey to see if he could come visit Gabriela and her family with us. He and sister Humphrey came and we had a great lesson. We let Gabriela talk practically the whole time, only adding in our testimonies here and there. She explained how her family is very Catholic, and that her parents aren´t too supportive of her decision to be baptized. President was very calm and inspired as he asked her questions to help her realize all the blessings and answers that she had already received about the restored church of Christ. She said that a lot of changes have happened in her home, and that one of the biggest changes has happened with her husband. That has really impacted her and by the end of the lesson when President invited her to be baptized on the 17th, she responded that God had already given her enough answers and that she needed to follow them. We left her home sooo happy and filled with the spirit. We taught their family a couple of other good lessons during the week, but then we had a big dissapointment. We had planned on going over on Saturday, but they called us and told us that they weren´t going to be home all day. I talked to Gabriela and made sure that she and her family all attended church the next day. She said that they would. Sunday morning we called to make sure that they were all awake. Nobody answered until we called her daugher Josefa´s phone. She said her parents had both gotten really sick with fever and the flu. Her dad had been throwing up all night, so they weren´t going to be able to attend. We passed by their home later on in the afternoon, but no one was home. We´re going to pass by again today, but we´re still kind of nervous cuz Gabriela is not a sure thing for this Sunday, but they need to take this step now before Satan can come in and cool down their excitement and testimonies. Pray that we have success there.
We´ve continued working with Benjamin´s ( the kid who got baptized a couple weeks ago) older sisters, Pamela and Carolina. They´re both super goofy and laugh way too much and are kind of snakey, but Pamela reads everything we read and when it comes time to sit down and teach, she is really attentive and takes it seriously. We taught her first and when we talked about baptism she told us that she didn´t want to be ¨Mormona¨ We asked her how she felt in church and she said that she felt something in her chest that she had never felt before. A warmth and comfortable feeling had been there, and when we explained that this was God´s spirit telling her that she needs to be there, she began to tear up and was again feeling the same thing. We immediately invited her to baptism and she accepted. That´s the power of the spirit! She´s progressed well since that moment. Carolina is a bit more immature, but she´s attended church twice now and really likes young women´s. Sadly Pamela hasn´t been able to attend church for a couple of weeks, but has told Mabel that she really wants to get baptized. They both have a baptismal date for the 24th of this month, and are progressing well. We´re going to have a family night tomorrow with them.
We have several other people that are progressing and attending church, but it´s been a struggle helping people be constant in their progress and conversion. We´re trying to find new investigators and we´ve found several really good one´s but they´ve been hard to find again. One woman, Paola, was really special and opened up to us in our first visit. She´s a mother of 3 little kids, and is getting a lot of medical tests done because she might have cancer. She told us that she was really scared for her children, and that she didn´t know what would happen to them if she died. Her husband had stopped beleiveing in God when his father died, and is really against going to churches. She also shared with us her fears about the world that her children are growing up in. She said that watching the news and seeing all the horrible things that are happening right now all over the world, homosexuality, murders, natural disasters, etc. she feels that she´s not of this world and that she doesn´t share at all with the ¨liberal¨ opinion that is sweeping the globe. Her world is her family and she wants to protect that above all else. These are real problems that people face and the gospel is so perfect for it. As she was sharing her feelings for over 30 minutes straight, with us just listening to her, I felt a pain and sadness for the world, and all the sin there is, that i´ve never felt before. In Moses 7 is says that God cries over his lost children, and that Enoch when shown the filthiness of the world also cried and said that he would never be comforted knowing the fate of those that didn´t repent. For the first time in my life I think I felt a sliver of how the prophets have felt, and I found myself tearing up while she explained all the filth that she´s seeing around her. The gospel is so perfect and I´ve never seen anyone so prepared to receive it, but I felt that even my tear filled testimony wasn´t enough to help her feel what I feel about this gospel, and it was frustrating knowing that we can´t do more for these people. Sometimes i want to just throw my small testimony into them, so they can understand why we are spening hours, days, months, and years of our lives preachign this gospel. But we can´t do that, we can only help others experience it in the same way we had too. Only through honest study, prayer, and repentance can one get a testimony of Christ´s atonement and His gospel. All of us have to invite others to excercise their faith, acting, so they can feel the spirit in their lives. We can´t do it for them.
I really love this gospel and the plan that God has for His children, specifically for our family. He knows us personally and is there helping us when He sees us trying to complete with His commandments. I love you all and thank you all for your love, emails, letters, and PACKAGES! Our family rocks and it´s all thanks to the gospel.
love you all tons,
Tanner
p.s. thank you for praying for Gabriela and her family, continue doing so and for Pamela and Carolina as well!