29 Junio 2015

This week was AWESOME! SO many miracles. Too bad Elder Stensrud wasn't here to see them, but it's great for Elder Briggs, coming into this area from one of the hardest areas of the mission.

Elder Briggs, from South Jordan Utah but came out from San Diego California because his family moved there after he graduated from High School. He's also 21. And about 7 feet tall. Just kidding, but he's super tall and skinny, even taller than Elder Stensrud. And he also started in the same area of the mission with the same trainer as me, so we've had a few really long discussions about people we knew and miss. And maybe some griping about our "dad" in the mission....But we both know now he's an awesome missionary.

Elder Velasco, I haven't heard anything more of him. He got sent home this last week (I don't remember if I said that last monday) and I heard a rumor that he already got released as a missionary. But I don't know.

Maribel is still progressing quite nicely, except she didn't come to church for the second week in a row. But this week she told us about how she really likes smoking but fell sick from it last weekend, which is why she couldn't come to church last week. So she's decided to stop. She also told us about how she's already told her friends she wants to become Mormon. This is after one time in a sacrament meeting, and one ward activity. She's pretty darn awesome. We also gave her a pretty powerful blessing, making her some pretty awesome promises if she continues strong in the gospel. Let's just see that she comes to church on Sunday....

Martha, we're not sure what's going on there. We called her Sunday morning and she said she was already getting ready to go to church, but then never showed up. Dora has been going to Aeropuerto recently, so we're thinking maybe Martha decided last minute to go with her over there, but we haven't confirmed that. One way or another, Rodolfo and Martha passed us on the street today and honked and waved at us. So that was nice to see that she was still alive.

Luis also came to church again! We hadn't seen him for a week and a half and just decided to call him before heading out to church. I think we woke him up, but he said he'd get there, and HE DID! But he left before we could get an appointment with him. So we still don't know his work schedule...we'll see how we can do this.

And NEW PEOPLE: one day Elder Briggs decided to pray for us to find a family of four to teach and baptize. That day or the next (I don't remember which) he decided to knock a door that I didn't even realize was a house, it just looked like a big stone wall with doors (which here generally means a workshop or an abandoned warehouse). A girl came to the door and then said for us to wait for a little. Out comes a lady named Mayela and she asks us to come in because we look hot and tired. She sits us down on her sofa and hands us water. Turns out she's a psychologist and family therapist. (Her living room is immaculate and her kids are all super well-behaved except the 9-month-old baby.) She says she always receives every preacher but that she's returned to being Catholic after a long time of being Atheist. We're about to start a lesson when her next client comes in and we set an appointment for the next day and give her the pamphlet of the Restoration.

The next day we come back with high hopes, again she gets us past the door, sits us down with water and sits down herself and starts to talk about how she 1) read the pamphlet, something that never happens, 2) was impacted how our church would invite people to investigate and ask God if it's true, something that no other church here does according to her, 3) knelt down and prayed to know if it was true and 4) received a spiritual confirmation that it was true. She told us (before we even start the lesson) that she believes that God might just want her to join this church and that she's willing to follow it and check it out. We just left her a quick message about recognizing spiritual responses and invited her to be baptized and she said yes then gave us cookies and doled out chocolate milk to her three children old enough to drink it, each in their own favorite cup and then her son Pedro said the last prayer and we left. As soon as we're out of hearing range, my companion and I just exploded cheering and laughing. She's so AWESOME!

But she didn't come to church. She told us she's waiting for money from her husband who works out of state, but that if she couldn't come this week, definitely this next week. We have high hopes.

Also this week, we were passing a house and we both felt prompted to knock it. Out comes a pretty tired looking woman. Turns out she's LDS and inactive for years, but her son was never baptized. So we started teaching them and they say they're going to come to church this next week. She doesn't work on Sundays, he doesn't have soccer games and they don't have family commitments until the evening. There should be nothing to stop them from coming.

Then on Sunday morning, we decided to pray for God to surprise us in church. Out of the blue, right before sacrament meeting started, a woman we'd met in the street a few weeks earlier just walks in with her member neighbor and sits down. AAAHH! Elder Stensrud and I had both felt like she would accept our message if she just listened to it, but she'd always been busy whenever we passed by, so eventually we just stopped going. She's active in her Christian church, but something she said to my companion as she was leaving really got us excited: "I really liked this church. So did my son (he's only 7 years old, what a bummer...just kidding). We'll see what God wants to do with my life." Yeah. We're pretty stoked.

Some other things from this week, it was our first time eating with Hermana Blanca, our convert. In our ward, the four missionaries always eat together and the hermanas take turns cooking lunch for us. So when all four of us came, she was expecting all four but apparently that wasn't communicated to her granddaughter Sofia who started shouting in a terrified voice "Why are there so many hermanos?!" and just refused to be consoled. This is the girl who normally has no problem crawling up on someone and then throwing herself backwards off of them, just knowing that they'll catch her and then giggling. One of her many nicknames is Tarzancita.

Yep, that's what's been going on in Frontera. I really like my new companion. I think he's been the easiest to get along with so far. He's a little in culture shock from coming from Saltillo where everybody's mean to Monclova where everybody seems super nice.

I read two talks this week that I really loved, and I'm not sure what they're called in English. "Hacia donde miramos?" by Elder Lynn B. Robbins and "Yo reprendo a todos los que amo" by Elder Christofferson. Both very awesome talks and helped me a lot, especially being in leadership here.

Que les vaya bien en todo lo que hagan!

Elder Taylor

[The two talks Elder Taylor mentioned are "Which Way Do You Face?" by Elder Lynn G. Robbins from the October 2014 General Conference and "As Many As I Love, I Rebuke and Chasten" by Elder D. Todd Christofferson speaking in the April 2014 General Conference.]