Sunday, July 5, 2015

June 22, 2015

I decided to write things out a little different today. I brought my journal and typed up a few things from it so you can hear things that happened each day. 

Monday-
Today was a great day! (despite the emotional breakdown of my companion but she was able to snap out of it and we got to work! We had a great lesson with our investigator Luis he is so funny! He repeats everything we say and he is super excited for his baptism this Saturday! His only question when we asked him if he had questions was what clothes he should wear to his baptism! He is also already planning a trip to go to the cordaba Temple in February to do baptisms! I love it! Afterwards we went to visit our golden investigator Gisela. Shes 19 and amazing! She is reading the BOM like crazy and keeps all her commitments. We hadn’t visited her for aq week since we were gone so we asked her if she had any questions for us to start off and she pulled out her ficha (I don’t remember what its called in English but its like a form we fill out before someone gets baptized) we had given it to her to look at and she had filled it out! She wants to be baptized so bad! I asked her why she wanted to be baptized and she said because for a long time shes been looking for a church and never found one that she felt was right until she walked into the Church of Jesus Christ. Shes been praying and reading and she knows its true! Hearing that really touched my heart. Her only challenge is she works with her family on Sunday! But she has such a strong desire to go to church so we will be praying that she can stop working on Sunday. We also did our 30 contacts in the street on our way home. Its rough trying to contact 30 people when we are in a hurry to get home or get to an appointment. We usually do 20 a day but we decided to do more this week and its gonna be a challenge with time! But one guy we contacted said “wow youre beautiful!” and my companion quickly stepped back and said “beautiful in the gospel” hahah I love that line im gonna use it from now on!
Tuesday-
Today we ate so much my stomach hurts! People here hardly ever offer us food during lessons but today in every single lesson we either had to eat something or drink mate or pop. It was horrible! But we had some good experiences. We went and visited Veronica with one of the returned missionaries in our branch. She really helped us because Veronica has been struggling to get to her baptismal dates! But little by little she is changing and today by the end of the lesson we were even talking about who is going to  baptize her! So now we just pray that her anxiety doesn’t get in the way and she can put her trust in the lord. My favorite part of the day was drinking Mate with my two favorite old people after our lesson ( luis our future convert and his “girlfriend”) I felt like I was hanging out at a retirement home. We found 2 new investigators today. They are super prepared to accept the gospel. We talked to lots of Catholics today. But that’s nothing new.
Wednesday-
Woke up bright and early this morning to head to our zone conference with president. It was a super good conference except when we had to do role plays and president made us be with him! It was scary but he helped us know what we could work on. After the conference, we had a super yummy lunch and got to watch meet the Mormons in Spanish!!! I loved it! Also it was great because I got a package from my awesome family! I´ll be eating fruit snacks for days! In the conference we learned a lot about following the spirit and how to use our time more wisely and plan better and I learned so much that I never knew! The president made us a promise that if we learn to dominate the principle of setting goals and planning, we can quadruple our work. He also made us a promise that we will never be unemployed! Those are some good promises right?! We put some of the things in practice tonight in our nightly planning and it amazed me how different it was! We didn’t have much time to work tonight, but we did have a cool experience. We were walking out of one of our areas and I saw a lady with 2 little girls walking and decided to talk to them. She was super nice and gave us her direction so that we could pass by another day. We were getting ready to walk away and the little girl said somethingto her mom and the mom says “oh youre Hermana stewart?!” and I asked how she knew because I had forgotten to introduce myself she said her little girl met us one day in a huge group of little kids playing in the streets and ever since she hasn’t stopped talking about Hermana stewart and Hermana hooke. Ah it just touched me that a little girl remembered me! I have no idea how because my name isn’t easy here. But im excited to go back and visit them! I think the mom will have more interest to know more now that she knows who this “Hermana Stewart” is that her daughter wont stop talking about.
Thursday-
Today was the coldest day of my life! Ok that’s a lie but it was pretty cold which not gonna lie, makes it a little harder to get up and get going. But once we were out working it get a little better. Really nothing too exciting happened today. Oh except that the Branch president told us he already wants to be released…he just got called as president 2 months ago! So we hadto counsel him and everything. That’s interesting right? I just cant see our bishop getting counseled by the missionaries haha it’s a little scary how much the members depend of the missionaries here. But that’s why we are here J But everything is all good, we got him excited again and I have faith that with time things will improve. Oh did you guys know that missionaries are also marriage and family counselors? Neither did I. but here I am 22 years old and trying to fix broken families. Its exhausting. But if its teaching me anything its that the gospel is the only answer. And maybe I wont have much to do with helping the families here, but I know that the things I am learning here will help me in the future with my kids and husband. So I try to just stay calm and put things in the lords hands and just learn.
Friday-
This morning Luis had his baptism interview and is all ready to go for tomorrow! We are super excited. We found 2 new investigators but they don’t talk much so that made it a little difficult to teach. I´ll admit that’s one of my weaknesses is teaching people who are shy! In the afternoon we visited Adrian our super difficult investigator. Today he decided to put us to the test and pulled out just about every doubt in the books. But we stayes firm and testified and in the end we invited him to say the prayer. We knelt down with him and he said he didn’t want to do it, but I stayed on my knees with my head bowed and about a minute later he started to say the most sincere prayer and really asked if the things we are teaching him are true. The spirit was finally there. Afterward he basically tod us he put us to a test to see if we would act nervous or doubt what we are teaching but he thanked us for testifying and being strong in our beliefs. Tonight was the birthday of our branch so they had an asado BBQ in the church and ive never eaten so much good meat! My tummy is killing me! But so worth it. And a family that we are reactivating came!
Saturday-
Today was the best day! We had our baptism and everything turned out great! Luis was a little confused when he came out of the water haha but other than that he was super happy. And my companion had her first baptism and shes on cloud nine. Now we have lots of excitement to get to work and find more! I know that there are people that god has prepared for us to find.
Sunday-
Another great day! The spirit was strong in church today which always makes things better even if there aren’t many memenbers. Luis got confirmed todey and we announced the baptism of Veronica for this Saturday! FINALLY! If she doesn’t get baptized this Saturday we have to drop her which will break my heart because I have worked so hard on her! But she was sitting next to me when president announced her baptism and she didn’t say anything so I think that’s a good sign. Gisella also came to church today and I overheard her saying shes excited for her baptism the 4th of july! So we are praying that we will have baptisms the next 2 Saturdays! So we are sick and it was super tough to get out to work tonight but we said a prayer and asked for strength and we got out and work and found 5 new investigators just in a couple of hours! It was amazing! Even though it was fathers day and everyone was drunk or didn’t want to let us in! yeah for miracles!

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