Okay so here i am on Thursday. The week´s almost over already, and time is just flying like i´ve never seen it go before.
Last week was pretty rough for us. We are working really really hard to find new investigators cuz we really only have the big 3 of Mariela, Jorge, and Mariela, all of which we´re hoping will be baptized before i leave cuz they´re all ready to go! Besides them we have some pretty sliim pickins. We keep on finding people, but when we go back it´s been near impossible to find them again. I actually had my worst day in the mission last week haha. Looking back on it now i can laugh about it, but on that day i was just plain miserable. i´ll tell you all about it in good humor.
We had scheduled appointments all day, but like I´ve never seen before, all of them fell. So there we were at 4:00pm looking at a full 5 and half hour day with absolutely nowhere to go. So what do us missionaries do when we have no appointments? We began knocking doors. We did that for an hour, during which it began to rain and we had no umbrellas. After 0 success I thought it would be good to go check up on some references that we´d received the week before. None of them were home, it´s raining even harder at this point, no umbrellas. So I thought we´d go for a quick visit to see some recent converts who lived close by to share a message and for referals to go teach. They weren´t home, so we began knocking doors again. We knocked every door in an entire neighborhood with 0 success. At this point it´s about 7:00, and we´re both soaked from head to toe. We were tired, hungry, sore, and soaked, so i thought we´d take a 5 minute break to think and make some kind of plan, all while eating a sopaipilla, a sort of fried bread thing. The lady in the store just looked at us when we walked in dripping all over her floor and asked us what the heck we were doing. I told her that we were just trying to share a message of Christ with people, she smiled and gave us some sopaipillas and told us to go home and get out of the rain. My first thought was ¨I wish¨ haha but we continued working. In the end we literally taught nobody and we had a half an hour to go before we had to go home. We went over to one of my converts house to share a quick message with them. They mercifully took us in and gave us some sandwhiches and gave us a ride home. I was seriously stunned at what had happened that day cuz I had never ever had a day like it. We taught zero lessons, something that i had never done, and i was more wet than i could remember, in fact the last time i was that wet was when I jumped into the pool, fully clothed, to get my cell phone that i had dropped in it haha.
Anyways, it was a pretty rough week, but we had a good sunday. mariela came with her less active husband, Mauricio, and they really liked church. She´s been interviewed and will be baptized on the 10th of September! She´s really really great and has gained such a simple but strong testimony. she just sucks up everything we teach like a sponge and wants to learn more. Our other Mariela also came, and her land lady and her son also came with her. We had our ward conference, and so after the 30 minutes of sustaining leaders ( so boring for them i´m sure) the meeting was actually really good. Everybody left there full of the spirit, and then we got to participate in a baptism with one of Elders Dalton´s and Ames´ investigators. It´s fun working in a house of 4 missionaries cuz we get to talk about and meet eachother´s investigators and so I feel like when they get baptized that I had a little part in it. Fun stuff.
On Monday I went out to Molina with Elder Dalton and Scott, who both served in Molina as well. Funny thing is that Elder Scott started his mission with me, and started in Molina. I then replaced him, and when I left Elder Dalton replaced me in MOlina. We went back and saw a few people and then ate lunch with the Oyarce family. They made us a great lunch and invited Fernanda, one of my converts, to eat with us. It was really fun to see all of them, but unfortunately the bus ride was 3 hours long to get there, so we had to hurry and leave to get back to Chillan to keep working, and for that reason i wasn´t able to write you guys on Monday.
This week has already started out better, and we´re actually seeing the fruits of those horrible rainy days, and have found and taught several people that we met last week. The work is going well and I´m really enjoying my time here. Yesterday we had a zone leader conference and so i got to see all the other zone leaders who came on the mission with me and we were able to talk about good times on the mission, the mtc, and also all the awesome, amazing plans that we have for after the mission. We´re not trunky but just excited!! It was really fun to see them, and it gave me more enthusiasm to keep working to the end. I also got a letter from President Humphrey that thanked me for all the hard work that i´ve given in my mission and invited me not to get trunky and to work for my last 3 weeks haha I had to laugh when I read it. he´s a great president and I´ve learned a ton from him.
Well that was my week in a quick 20 minute writing session, I´ll let you guys know how this week turns out. I almost forgot to write that the 2nd mariela is getting interviewed this week to be baptized this Sunday! Pray for her that she´ll be ready and excited to make this covenant with God!
Love you all tons and thanks for all your support and emails
Tanner