Week 69

Mommy & All,

"You wouldn't ask why the rose that grew from the concrete had damaged petals. In fact, we'd all celebrate its tenacity." -Unknown

This week was really good. We had the chance to visit Matilde this week, an investigator we haven't seen in a while. Her boyfriend, Raul, is one of our investigators as well but he was sleeping and she didn't wanna wake him up. So we sat down and talked with Matilde a little more about baptism and just tried to help her progress since she knows a ton already after 2 years of investigating the church. Raul's brother is also a member in our ward, so they know a lot from them as well. As we were talking, Matilde told us that her and Raul decided to get married! Which is really good because that was the biggest thing keeping them getting baptized. I don't think its gonna be automatic marriage and baptism like it was with Mikaela and Federico, and they also aren't getting married till October, but its a huge step in the right direction from where we were with them. 

We also had the chance to see Miguel again for the first time in a while. We sat down and watched a video where Elder Uchdorf talks about our "Banquet of Blessings" and how we can be missing out on huge blessings by not doing the small things like praying and reading. So after that we read 2 Nephi 32 and 33 with him and that was really good. It just talks about why we need to pray and believe in the the words of Christ. We asked him if he would read the Book of Mormon just a little every day and he told us he would so that was good to hear.

We got to visit with Santi a couple times this week. The first time we watched a video where President Monson talks about "Daring to stand alone" with the things that we believe. How we're never alone since we always have God, but sometimes all our friends and people close to us will go in another direction. The next time we talked about prayer. We talked a lot about Joseph Smith and Santi seems to be in that same position. We showed another video and he got pretty bored and distracted. His mom, the former missionary, and her friends are doing everything they can to make sure he doesn't get baptized or believe in the church, and of course his dad and us are saying the opposite. So we told him his mom can talk all day, we can talk all day, but the only way he can know if one of us is right and who is right, is through personal prayer. He has never said a personal prayer before in his life, and I cant remember if I ever did either when I was 11. So that is the goal right now is getting him comfortable with the thought of prayer and talking to God one on one. 

Much Love,

Elder C.