Monday, January 13, 2014

A Baptism and Semana 12

Hey everyone!
Yes, we had a baptism this last week! Well, yesterday, at 7 in the morning. Which meant that my companion and I had to wake up at 4AM. We thought we were going to die. The baptism was for Maury, Keler´s older brother! He is really nice with us, but we aren´t very sure if he was exactly ready for his baptism...well, our hope is is that as we continue to visit him and as he continues to keep his compromisos, he will gain a testimony. 

About a month ago, we started a Family Home Evening with about 4 families who were struggling to have FHE every week. We met Monday nights in the house of one of the families. Every week, more and more people attended until we OUTGREW the houses of the members! So, we decided to have everyone have their own individual FHE, and move our meeting to the church on Wednesday nights! It is now called Noche de Hermanomiento (I thought it was llamamiento at first...), and is up to about 40 people now in attendance! The main goal of these meetings is to get investigators and less actives to church. It started with just my companion and I teaching, but now all 6 missionaries in our ward, including our zone leaders, come and teach together every meeting! It also always ends with snacks, which is a huge bonus. :)

It´s funny how, when you are on a mission, especially in a foreign country, you don´t ever know what is going on in the rest of the world. For instance, literally like 3 days ago, I found out that Nelson Mandela died. Apparently that happened a while ago? SABER!

We have been teaching this boy named Ederson, who is 14 years old, and has a testimony stronger than a lot of members that I know! He keeps having experiences that are pointing him to the church, and almost every day that we teach him, he has a new experience. The thing is, he never wants to wake up in the morning. And, considering that our ward starts at 8AM (yeah...HUGE problem for the missionaries with our attendance of investigators), he has not attended in 3 weeks. His dad is less active though (but he is starting to return to church), and gave him a huge chicote yesterday in front of us about the importance of church attendance. Kind of awkward, but if it gets him to church, vaya!

Well, this is my last week with Hermana Sol. The next time I email, I will be out of training, and with a different companion. How that happened so fast is beyond me. I´m already going on 4 months on my mission, and I feel like I have only been gone for 1. I am excited to not have to have companionship study for 2 hours everyday, but I am sad that I won´t have who will probably be my favorite companion of all with me any longer. I am also a little scared, because Hermana Sol is fluent in English, and I am fairly certain that my next companion will NOT be, not even close!

Speaking of fluency, I had my first real, REAL conversation yesterday in Spanish, where I understood EVERYTHING. We were at the house of a member, and Hermana Sol was in the bathroom. I was sitting in the living room with about 8 members of the family, and just chatting with them about my family, the church, upcoming transfers, and church doctrine on baptism haha. Seriously, I understood everything that was going on!

Well, next week is going to be a little nuts, so I won´t be emailing until Thursday, January 23. We have PDay on Monday, Transfers on Tuesday, a tri-mission conference with Elder Cook on Wednesday, and Weekly Planning, District meeting, and Emailing on Thursday. So don´t panic when I don´t email on Tuesday!



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