Hey there yáll,

Well this week had it´s ups and downs like every week in the mission. Elder Weston said there´s a song that says ¨ I get high, I get low, when I´m low I get high¨ (that might be talking about drugs, but we´ll pretend no haha) anyways, he says he feels like the mission is like that haha. It´s such a spiritual, emotional, and physical rollercoaster. This week we literally experienced every single one of those highs and lows.
On Tuesday night we both began to feel super sick. I had a horrible head ache, sneezing and coughing....a bad cold. Elder Weston had a headache, cold chills, and nausea...a bad 24 hour flu. We were out of commision on Wednesday and it felt so weird to take any time off. i feel like I literally haven´t rested for 2 years and it was a weird weird feeling to be sleeping during the day. i felt kind of guilty, but we both felt a lot alot better the next day, so we feel that it was a good decision. We´ve been working hard with our focus group this week, those that have baptismal dates coming up. It was our focus and we had success in some parts and others not so much.
First off Nicolas and Erica, who have already passed their interviews, were supposed to be baptized on Sunday but weren´t. Erica still hasn´t told her parents that she´s been sharing with the missionaries, and we can´t go over there until she tells them. She actually lives outside of our ward boundaries, but doesn´t live in any other ward´s boundaries cuz she lives in a more country area. We´ve been telling her all week that she needs to go and let them know, but she´s super scared to tell them cuz their really really evangelical. We also had a bit of a scare with them this week. She was at school and her religion professor asked her why she hadn´t been going to his church (evangelical) She told him that she had been attending the Mormon Church, and that she was thinking about getting baptized there. He took her into his office and began explaining to her all the reasons why she shouldn´t be baptized there, polygamy, false doctrines, more scripture than the bible, blah blah. Anyways he crammed a bunch of doubts into her head. She told us that he was really creepy as well saying that he looked at her as a daughter, that she had beautiful eyes and skin (she has colored eyes and lighter skin) and that if she were older he would have liked to marry her....creeper. Anyways she was a little freaked out by him, but still had doubts now thanks to his help. She called us and said that she wanted some answers about Joseph Smith and other church leaders and about polygamy. I was super bummed cuz i´ve had to explain this before to converts and investigators and it´s never gone well. We decided not to go into all the details about the church´s history, the polygamy, etc. but focused on her. We asked her how she had felt while learning with us, going to church, reading the book of mormon, and praying about it. She said that she felt great. We then asked how she felt when her professor was telling her all those things about the church, and she said that she felt really uncomfortable. We then read a scripture in Moroni 7: 16-17 and explained to her that we all were given the light of Christ and that through this guide we are able to discern the good from the bad. it was really powerful and I´ve learned on my mission that we don´t always have to answer every question or doubt by a fact, or a scripture, but that if we have confidence in the spirit, and let Him do His job, people feel his influence and are converted. It´s having faith in our instincts, and impressions that allow us to come closer to God and feel His influence even more. We finished by reading Ether 12:6, telling them that if we want any blessing or answer in this life, we must first pass through a trial of our faith and take steps to show our faith. Nico turned to her and said that their first trial of faith was baptism and that they needed to do it. Elder Weston and I were both stunned, and I knew that the spirit had guided him in his answer because that´s exactly where we wanted the lesson to go to. During the final prayer i felt the spirit from my head to my toes and a comfortable feeling that we had taught what God wanted and that we had helped them feel that as well. The spirit is awesome and when we are calm and just let God do His work, He works through us in awesome ways.
We had a big miracle this week that helped us have a baptism! The grandson of Francisco and Beatriz, Jean Marcos, came down to their house for two weeks cuz they have winter vacations right now. He came to church two weeks in a row, so we decided that we had better hurry and take advantage of the situation and teach him. He´s known the church for over a year now, has gone to young men´s campouts, baptisms, etc. but has never been taught fully cuz he lives really far away. We went over two sundays ago and asked him how frequently he came down to visit his grandparents. He told us that he came down almost every weekend. He then told us that he wanted to get baptized. The words every missionary wants to hear!! We put a baptismal date for the 30th of July, and passed by every day this week to teach him. We found that he already knew everything that we teach and that he was completing all the commandments already. We had his interview on Friday and asked him if he would be willing to be baptized on Sunday, the 24th. He said yes! His grandpa, Francisco, another one of my converts here, baptized him. it was really a miracle cuz we taught him for only a week and he was baptized. After all the ups and downs that we´ve had this month with awesome investigators, I feel that God just gave us a little tender mercy and blessed us to have that baptism. We were kind of down about several of our investigators who, being on the doors of baptism, have decided not to continue, but we had a miracle with Jean Marcos.
The zone has also done really well this month, we currently have 17 baptisms this month and have a couple other possibilites. it´s been fun to work in this zone and see the improvements that have been made here. Last year they were only baptizing around 5-10 every month, with a couple below 5. This zone looks like something completely different now, and I know it´s because we´ve been working hard and seeing the results. Many families have been brought to the knowledge of the truth here and it´s been a great experience being a zone leader and being a part of it. Now we need to focus a ton on finding new investigators and helping them progress rapidly towards baptism (maybe not in only 1 week, but quickly!)
I ask you all to pray for Nicolas and Erica, and we´re going to go back to Gabriela cuz President Humphrey asked us to do it, so pray that we may have success there. Oh and to answer the question about that new family, they´re getting back from Osorno on August 1, because that´s when their vacations end and they begin school again.
Love you all tonsssssssss
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