Plátanos Fritos‏

Monday, June 16, 2014

What up blokes? Things are getting hot and humid over here. We had some serious rain and storm action here over the past couple days, but that's ok, because the storms of the skies nor the storms of life can quench the Spirit of The Lord. Here's a little bit of what we did this week.
 
Our Zone Focus as a mission was to get 12 lessons as a companionship taught to less actives and recent converts. So we really tried to focus on those. On Tuesday, we met with some less actives and what not. The highlight of the day was when we went and met with Hector. We taught him about the Ten Commandments and how we can live them today. When we taught about adultery, he came to realize that he has been living in sin for the past 20 years. We committed him to talk with his pareja about getting married. We promised him blessings that will come as he keeps the law of chastity and tried to help him to realize the great importance of keeping the commandments of God. We read out of Mosiah 2:41 to show. I love that scripture. It is such an excellent demonstration of what the obedient receive when they keep the commandments. He committed to read 1 Nephi 3. He reads one chapter a week, like 4 or 5 times just to make sure that he understands it well.  Hopefully the Spirit touches him and helps him to make the change!

 On Wednesday, We went and taught Juanita about the atonement. It went decent. The Spirit just wasn't there as strong as it has been before.  We were trying to teach that amazing doctrine of the atonement so she could be motivated to change, but we are just unsure of whether it hit home for her. We are praying and doing our best to know what to do.  Her situation is super tough and she wants the Gospel so bad in her life, but maybe isn't willing to make the necessary sacrifices to accept it. I hope I'm wrong and she starts doing the necessary things!
 
Passed by Luis and Aida and watched the Great Apostasy video with them. Taught about how it is a fundamental principle of the Gospel that Christ established His church and that after being lost and
 corrupted over many years that the Gospel is back through living prophets and apostles. They say they understand. But if you do, why don't you read the Book of Mormon, pray to know if it is true, and come to church so you can come to know for yourself if these things are true? Haha I feel like there is a theme in my entry for today. We can talk all we want, but until we actually start to do something to serve The Lord it won't profit us anything! We committed them to read and pray, and I hope that they change this time and do it. Haha we gave Luis a triple combination with large print, and he is up to section 90 already of the Doctrine and Covenants. He's finished the Book of Mormon. We hope that the Spirit will tell him to actually act some more now!

 Taught Brenda and Geraldo about the atonement of Jesus Christ. It went well. Geraldo is a swell guy. Super funny. Brenda is always marking her Book of Mormon where we read it while we are there. She still doesn't feel comfortable praying, but she'll get there. Geraldo loves to read and pray. We are going to invite them to be baptized the next lesson. Get stoked!

 We taught Coralie about the plan of salvation. Had a ton of great questions that led us perfectly through the lesson. She is like the only one that is actually acting. She is reading, actually praying,  making plans so she can actually come to church, and agreed to baptism on conditions of receiving an answer of the truthfulness of these things. She is the youngest of all our investigators at 18 but she's the only one that gets it! She is a bright spot in a dark place right now, and we will see what happens!

We did some other stuff throughout the other days, probably taught some lessons and found some investigators, but on Saturday we taught Hermano Santana. He's he one that we had stopped by like a dozen times and just said hi and that we loved him before he invited us back. We watched the restoration DVD with him. Turns out he was baptized around 25-30 years ago. It's been a minute. So his current wife and his two daughters are not baptized. Hopefully The Lord can help us to reactivate Hermano Santana and to teach and baptize his family members. The lesson that we had with him went well. Solid participation from him, and he seems to want to progress. We gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to read it with  his daily study of the bible, and he said that he would do it. We are stoked about him.  He could be a strength to the branch as it becomes a ward. We set up a
 time to go back when we could teach him when Teresa, his wife, could be present as well. It's gonna be awesome!!

Well we are lovin life here. Keep moving forward. Always do your best, because our time on earth is short. There isn't time to waste, so literally live each day like it's your last. Do good.  Love one another.  Love God and serve Him. 

Love you all!!!!!

 Elder Dial
 
  Mis amores. Chachi Castro y Wendalyn Martínez