Wednesday, May 22, 2013

May 20, 2013

This week has been awesome.  We started out the week with interchanges and it was awesome.  We were working hard than at night all of our appointments feel through.  We just started contacting the houses right close to where we live.  We started contacting a house and a girl walks out to talk to us.  We started talking and then she stops and starts talking in English.  We were shocked - it was super weird - to have our contact change real quickly into English and both me and my companion were shocked and stuttering speaking English.  Tuesday we were able to go to the Temple!  It was the best!  Even though in our travels to get there Satan was really trying to stop us from going.  There were a bunch of things that happened that almost caused us to not go.  When we finally got there it was such a great blessing.  It was awesome to be able to be in the temple receiving revelation from God for how we can do better and how we can help our investigators.  There is no better place to be than in the temple.  It's really God's house and he really is there. Things are all getting better here in the area.  We are working our butts off here and even though we don't have any baptism dates we are teaching a lot of positive people that will hopefully accept baptism dates this week.  The Lord blesses us for our efforts.  It blows me away being a missionary and seeing all the miracles that God does during the week changing peoples lives.

Friday, May 17, 2013

May 13, 2013

It was a great week with Mother's Day and all that good stuff.  My companion and I are really happy even though at times he really acts like a child - we get along really well.  We have really been seeing the miracles this week.  We have been visiting Leonardo just about every day trying to get him to accept a baptism date and progress more.  It just got complicated because his wife just had a baby and they are not married.  But with a lot of prayer and fasting we will see miracles.  We are also now teaching a guy named Melkis, he is the husband of a member.  He is progressing really well and we will hopefully put a baptism date with him right now when I leave from writing.  The Lord is powerful and he really answers prayers.  We had a zone conference with President this week and something that he said is that we need to be the kind of missionaries that we leave a mark on the area so that when the future missionaries come the members will say we want you to be like that Elder.  After a lot of time the branch is changing, they have all gotten excited to get working and to do what they are supposed to do.  It really is true with faith, prayers and the hope of a better future the Lord does the work.  If we do our part the Lord takes care of the outcome.  That is what matters. It doesn't matter if we baptize 100 - it matters that we do what the Lord wants!  WORK! WORK! WORK! That all there is.  We are working hard and loving life and I hope it's the same for you.  Pray for Melkis and the Ruiz Family.

May 6, 2013

 We really had an interesting week and Satan was fighting hard against us.  In one day we had really good plans and had confirmed all our plans and it was crazy to see how Satan worked against us.  We showed up to one of our first appointments and as we get there to begin teaching a Pastor from another church and a couple of the members of the other church all show up to visit this guys wife.  It was a little awkward but luckily our investigator speaks English so he told me that it was a little weird so it would be better to go back a different day.  We left that appointment to go to another appointment and we get there and the door was wide open to this guys house.  As we come to find out the firemen (which are right in front of this guys house) had just barely left - he had a fire there in the roof of his house and so he was in the process of cleaning up all the mess so we helped a few minutes and he decided it was better for us to go back the next day.  It was weird - me and my companion left laughing a little bit from all the things that had happened and not thinking anything else could go wrong.  Well we thought wrong.  We got to our last appointment of the day and it was weird - for the first time ALL the family was there.  We get there, sit down and we are talking for like 5 minutes and the power went out so me and my companion had to leave to go to our house.  It was ridiculous.  Satan has really worked hard against us this week to stop us from doing good things.  We ended the week in a fast and really the Lord is blessing us.  I started my fast pleading that we could baptize a family this month and if the Lord could send a family to church the next day.  As we showed up to the church we saw coming up the street a member and her husband who isn't a member.  It really was an answer to our fasting that the Lord wants us to baptize this month.  When they got to the church the sister told us that she wanted us to start visiting her husband so that he can get baptized and they can get married.  We have really seen a lot of miracles this week and we know that we have a great week to come.  The power of fasting and prayer is real.  Pray for Melkis and the Ruiz family so that they can get baptized this month.