Week 83

Hey everyone!

We had two baptisms this past week! Before I got into the area, the previous missionaries were teaching a couple, Ana and Edgar, and they were a couple days from their baptismal date, and then Edgar stated that he didn't feel ready quite yet. They then went out of town for the first couple of weeks of this transfer, but we re-established contact and set a baptismal date for the 28th of August. And this time, it was truly their time. We are very thrilled for their decision to let God prevail.

Carlos continues to be dropping our jaws with how golden he is. We retaught the Restoration with him and his cousin, Francisco, and he was like, "Elders, i wanna share this cool spiritual insight I had..." and then continues to read Moroni 10:3-5, which is a scripture that we were just about to share with Francisco since it talks about receiving knowledge of the truth through the Holy Ghost. In a later lesson, we taught about tithing, and Carlos already had a testimony of it. What was crazier is that we put Francisco on date for baptism for September 18th... in a tithing lesson.

Elder Stuflick and I are absolutely popping off in this area, and this has been probably the happiest I've been on my mission. We found 14 new people to teach this week just because lessons get canceled and we take advantage of it by knocking doors and talking with people on the street. We have found that the best way to find more people that are willing to let God prevail in their lives is to just simply find more people. By chance alone, a portion of these people will have been prepared by God to start making these changes in their lives.

Miracle:

We were in an apartment complex knocking doors, when we felt prompted to knock this one door. We knocked, and from the inside we heard a dog barking, but no one answered. We knocked again. More dog barking. No one answered. We started joking around trying to get the dog to open the door by jiggling the door handle (for some reason), to which someone immediately opened the door and was like, "ARE YOU TRYING TO BREAK INTO MY HOUSE!?" and we were like "uuhhhhhhhhh.... no." She responded, "Oh... okay!" and then pointed to another apartment building where there might be some Spanish speakers.

We went to that building, and the very first door that we knocked, a girl opened the door and waved her mom over. They spoke Spanish, and had a massive image of the Virgin Mary on her wall *cough 10 Commandments cough*. She invited us in, and we learned that although they believed in God, they really weren't practicing religion or attending a church. We continued to blow their socks off with the message of the Restoration and they were super receptive.

Moral of the story: attempting to break into people's homes will guarantee that they answer the door, and you'll find some pretty sick people because of it.

God is still a God of miracles.

Elder Terry

Fotos:

1-2) Ana and Edgar got baptized! 🥳🙏