Tuesday was pretty cool. We
went to see Bernarda and ended up talking with her sister Marta who is
also a less active. We´re looking at reactivating and baptizing an
entire family there. Hopefully we can get a hold of them when they´re
all there. That night we had a lesson with our new investigator Marcela
and her son Richie. We decided to ask Fernando Ponce, an RM in the ward
who served in Colombia, and his mom to come with us to the lesson.
Marcela doesn´t want to go to our ward because the only place she is
familiar with is Renca 1. So we figured that a lesson with some members
would help out a bit. The lesson was super killer. It was such a
blessing to have Fernando there. While he was talking about the Book of
Mormon I had another strong witness that the Book of Mormon is true. I
had been reading we need to keep praying to strengthen our testimonies
on things and I had been praying this past week to be able to strengthen
my testimony of the Book of Mormon. I don´t know if we taught a perfect
lesson to Marcela but it sure was exactly what I needed. I can´t
describe to you how powerfully I felt the spirit there. The Book of
Mormon is true people! Marcela is still aprehensive to attend our ward
but she´ll come around.
Wednesday started out
with district class. I learned so much and it was super super helpful
this week. I learned a lot about working with the bishop and making
specific goals in specific categories to do so. That afternoon was kind
of crazy. We finally had our money for the month so we had to do some
shopping. We tried to do it quickly but all the atm´s were out of money
in the first super market and only one worked in the second. We finally
got what we needed and go to go visit with Maria and Juan. Maria needed
help writing a recipe in English for a class. I helped her with that and
tried to help her pronounce the words. It was quite entertaining. It´s
really difficult for them to make some of the sounds we have in the
English language. We ended up running out of time and just leaving a
quick scripture so not the best visit but I´m glad I got to help her
out. That night we met with Alex and Carola and taught a lesson about
the organization of the ward and the different priesthood offices and
what not. It was kind of a rough lesson. I didn´t know exactly how I
wanted to go about teaching it because we had taught it before and Alex
was a little sick and not paying a whole lot of attention. On top of
that we had already eaten dinner and then they made cumpletos and
insisted that we eat them. I felt sooooo fat. The other bummer was that
we couldn´t get a member to come with us for our lesson with Marcela the
next day.
Thursday was kind of funny. We had
some appointments and I wasn´t planning on going to visit one of the
people that was in our plans for the day because we weren´t gonna have
time. However, later that day I felt like we should swing by anyways and
atleast make an appointment for another day. As we turned into a street
we´ve walked down so many times the dogs started going crazy outside of
this one house. A lady came out and said "Are you looking for me?" We
couldn´t turn down such an easy contact and started to talk to her.
Turns out she was an inactive member of the church that we had no idea
lived in our ward! Her name was Petronida. We talked for a while and she
was super nice and she said we could come by the next day. At the end
of it Elder Ortiz and I had already forgotten her name. Elder Ortiz
asked her what it started with and she said "P". After a few seconds of
thought he said "Pancrasia!" That´s Spanish for pancreas. I busted up
laughing and so did she and she said not quite. It was super cool that
the spirit guided us over there to find her. AFter that we had a lesson
with Catalina. The niece of Bernarda. It had been forever since we
taught her but we found out she had kept all of our commitments! We read
the first chapter of the Book of Mormon and she seems to really pay
attention and understand. We left her with another commitment and she
says she´ll say the pray next time! That night I had an idea to give
Marcela a tour of the church and I was super pumped for it. The church
was supposed to be open so we went and got her and went to the church
and there were a ton of people waiting outside. Marcela got to talk with
some of the Relief Society sisters and they invited her to sing with
them which was good. But after waiting for what seemed like forever the
keys never came and we went back to Marcela´s to teach her. We taught
about the Book of Mormon some more but I think she struggles to pay
attention a bit. We asked a lot of questions about what we just read and
she couldn´t answer really any of them. I feel that she´s gonna
progress slowly. It ended up being a good lesson though because she
really opened up to us and explained some of her problems to us.
Friday
we got to talk with Maria Rojas who has the husband with dimensia. She
has kids staying with her right now so she´s doing super well. We went
to visit a contact named Felipe and we ended up finding his mom. She was
super cool and gave us a better time that we could come back to share
with him and the family. She tried to do the little kissy thing on the
cheek goodbye and I awkwardly kept her a hand shake away and explained
we couldn´t do that. That night Alex and Carola cancelled on us for like
the first time ever so we tried to visit Brandon. We ended up talking
with his mom for a long time because Brandon wasn´t there. All of his
family was there but him. By talking to his mom I think we figured out
part of the reason why Brandon doesn´t read and keep our commitments a
whole lot. His mom respects the church but she doesn´t like it a whole
lot. So that´s gonna be a tough problem to deal with.
Saturday
and Sunday were conference and they were amazing. I had been praying
pretty hard the days beforehand to be able to understand conference and
learn a lot. Heavenly Father answered my prayer in a little bit in a
different way than I had expected. They had a classroom in the church
with an English session! One of the only stakes in our entire mission
that does that. I learned so so so much from conference and it was such a
blessing to be able to see it in English. The next time though I´ll be
ready to listen in Spanish. I loved some many of the talks and couldn´t
pick a favorite if I tried. A lot of the talks got me thinking about my
parents. They´ve truly been such good examples to me in my life of truly
diligent members of the church and always strong in the gospel. I
really received a stronger appreciation for them during the conference
as I realized that did pretty much everything that they said parents
should be doing. My favorite quote from conference was "Decisions
determine destiny." It´s so true. This life isn´t made up of big
decisions. It is made up of little ones every single day. Whether
or not we decide to do the little things is so important. Reading
our scriptures and praying every day is essencial to making other good
decisions and knowing what we need to do. I loved how they talked about
getting a personal witness that this is the true gospel. It´s true that
the testimonies of others can only carry you so far. A testimony isn´t a
one time thing either. It´s a process of a lifetime in which we will
constantly learn more as we search and ask diligently for answers. We
always need to be trying to strengthen our testimonies because if it
isn´t getting stronger I promise you it will get weaker. Make the right
small decisions everyday it makes the biggest difference!
Love you all,
Elder Shell
No comments:
Post a Comment