Hola familia! Wow, what a week. Seriously, we had so much success this week and i cant even comprehend it. It was definitely a hard week and i had some down moments, but it is crazy how much success we had. First off, thanks all for your emails! I am glad you all are doing well and thanks for the updates!
So dont have a ton of time today becase we had to go to concepcion for a return and report meeting wiht all the elders that came in the same week as me. Which was SO fun by the way. i got to see elder watt and elder white and elder long, all my buddies from the MTC. It was seriously a blast. I had SO much fun and we all just laughed the entire time about all the stupid stories that we have experienced. I realized how incredible the success we are having in Arauco is, and i am super grateful for that. We laughed about all the stupid stuff from the mtc, and just were cracking up. Missions sure are funny, and our spanish still all sucks.
Other than that. We had 9 investigators at church this week, and that was missing 7 others that should have been there. We are teaching 4 families right now, and while i know better than to assume i know what the outcome will be, i have a ton of faith that god has sent us to these families to help them in some way. Haha our attendance at church was 60...9 of which were investigators. We are working hard, thats for sure.
So the big miracles this week were with Paolina and Freddy, who i think i mentioned last week. Paolina was the one who prayed to have help and then we showed up. we had a really hard time finding them in their house again, but finally saturday night we were able to make contact with them. We invited them to church, and while Freddy isnt really interested, Paolina was interested but just scared to go. So we were like...well Paolina if you feel sick, where do you go? hospital. If you feel spiritually drained and need help...where do you go? Haha church! So finally we got it through her head that she needed to go. She went with her two kids, valentine and juliana, and had an amazing time. on the way home, her son Valentine who is 10 years old told her that he wantd to get baptized in that church, and it touched her so much. so they all 3 have baptismal dates now! We are really working hard with Freddy to try and get him to change with his family, and i think he will change with time. We shared some really personal experiences wiht him and it seemed to resonate, so i think he will take some initiative to pray and read and really find out for himself. I think we will delay the baptismal dates of the other ones so they can all get baptized together, but we put them so he would realize that he needed to change because his family wants too as well.
Another investigator, Hector and Cecilia, are quite possibly the two most prepared investigators of all time. THey have two kids, hector junior and Elena, and they arent married (but want to be, and commented our church would be a perfectplace to do it). We found them about a week and half ago, and they have been golden ever since. They have read EVERYTHING we have given them, were ready on time before we got there on sunday, and have just been pure golden ever since. They love the church so much, and said "we cant wait to come back". haha seriously we are doing NOTHING here in Arauco, God is just preparing all of the people for us! He does all the work and we just work hard to find the people that he already prepared. Its a great system. What else...
Johan got baptized this week! I attached the pictures of Johan at his baptism. I took more but the pictures take forever to send so i cant really send more. I got Machete`d from shardae and mom (like when someone chastises you) for not sending enough pictures...or something like that ;) haha so ill try to send more. Johan is just insanely smart and his brother Cristian is getting baptized this sunday as well. They are such great kids and we really think they will be the avenue through which their family comes back to church. In his confirmation, the branch president blessed him that he would be able to serve a mission in the future. How incredible would that be??? Seriously, i imagined him serving a mission and i just realized how incredible this work is. It can change you SO much if you let it.
I am so happy family. This is by far the hardest thing i have ever done, but there are few feelings like seeing someone´s life change - dramatically and forever. I have seen god work miracles that i didnt know were possible, send us to homes that i didnt know existed in this town, and answer prayers in ways i never would have thought. I have such a strong testimony that when we give a LITTLE bit more, god gives us a TON more. Such a strong testimony. I honestly am so grateful every day that heavenly father has blessed me so much and put so much confidence in me. I love the gospel and love this work more and more every day.
Also, the other picture is of a political rally sing...the size of a house. Literally, the sign is bigger than the house. Hahahahaha i was laughing so hard when i saw it. The only person i could think of that would do that in the US would be shardae...love you sis :)
Ciao familia!
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