I hope you are all doing great! It has been such a great week here :)!! It has been surprisingly cold, well, it's been around 60 degrees, but we have been freezing! I had to bust out my sweaters and my jacket, and we have been blasting the heater whenever we get in the car! I know, we're a little wimpy, but the humidity just bites when it gets cold.
We have seen tons of miracles, and we ended up with 7 investigators this week! Lots of our investigators from last week dropped off, but we are really excited about some of the people we are working with currently.
One of the people we are working with right now is named Angel. He is an older man, and he lives alone. He runs some sort of a tax business from his home, and he always has plenty of coca cola and bananas to hand out to customers and the missionaries. Kind of a weird combination, but we are getting accustomed to it. He loves to tease us, and loves to laugh. He is such a great person, and he really has desires to learn more about God and to follow him. We were excited when he accepted baptism at the end of the Resto, but our concern is just that he genuinely loves everyone and accepts all religions. In some ways that is good, but we need to help him understand that he really only needs one baptism as long as it is done by the proper authority. We were sad that he did not come to church yesterday, but we are going to bring some ward members with us this week to visit him, and we are hoping that will help him.
Another person that we are working with right now is Raul.Raul lives alone, works all the time, drinks, smokes, and loves reading the Book of Mormon. He did not come to church yesterday either, so we went to his house last night to follow up and see what happened. We were surprised to see that he is already in 2 Nephi, and he has only had the book for about a week. He is still praying about it, and doesn't feel like he has received an answer yet. We are trying to help him recognize how he is going to get his answer. We talked last night about the importance of coming to church to receive an answer, we also talked about the importance of setting a goal of baptism. He was very very hesitant, at first. However, we would not give up on him. We used scriptures, testimony, personal experience, and everything we could think of to express the importance of these things. We know that the spirit was definitely guiding what we said because 45 minutes later he accepted baptism, and even set himself with a date of February 4th! He told us "uds son buenas misioneras" (you are good missionaries!) because we would not leave until he had accepted a baptismal date. He is super cool, and we are praying that he will be able to recognize the answer he is looking for!
Our other investigator right now is named Caridad. She has been taught by missionaries before (actually all of our investigators right now have been taught by missionaries before). We decided to teach her the Plan of Salvation because she had a lot of questions about it the first time we met her, and she expressed to us that she is really afraid to die. She is probably around 75 years old. When we went to teach Caridad her sister was there as well, so we invited her to join in on the lesson. Somehow we ended up way off topic and talked about eternal marriages for quite a while, but when we invited them to be baptized Caridad's sister (who is exceedingly Catholic) declined. We tried to explain to her the difference between this baptism, and infant baptism, but she wouldn't have it. However, Caridad spoke up and told us that she wants to be baptized. We were so happy! It is going to be hard for her because she lives with a couple of her sisters, and her husband, and they are all very Catholic, and not super happy about the fact that she wants to get baptized. On top of that, her husband is having an operation this week, so it will be hard for us to meet with her. However, she is a sassy little fire ball, and we know the Lord will be there to help her!
Those are all of our investigators for now. Yesterday a man that we had talked to on the street a couple days ago randomly showed up to church. He loved sacrament meeting, especially because it was fast and testimony meeting, and he gets very passionate about his testimony. He kept saying "Si" and "Amen" during the testimonies, which was super funny. Well, about half-way through the meeting he turns to me and asks if he is allowed to share his testimony. I wasn't really sure what he would say, but I told him yes. We held our breath as he walked up to the podium, and proceeded to bear his testimony about the New Testament. He actually did a great job, even though some of the things he said were not exactly what we know, the ward members were really good sports about it. It was kind of a relief when he sat back down. After sacrament meeting we were able to teach him the Restoration in the chapel, which allowed the spirit to be there in ABUNDANCE. It was a very powerful lesson, and we were surprised when, at the end, he simply said "thank you, but I don't need those things." He believes that the only thing he needs for salvation is the New Testament. We tried to testify, but eventually the spirit helped us to recognize that it really is not his time yet. However, he really enjoyed church, so we know a huge seed has been planted. He is a really really good person, so we know that one day he will be ready!
It has been a really busy week trying to meet with our investigators, especially because we had a bunch from last week as well that have since dropped off. I love feeling so busy, we know that the Lord is blessing us with so many miracles. I love being able to share this gospel, because I know it is what brings happiness into our lives. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and that His church is here on the earth, I feel so blessed to be a part of it!
Love you all!
Hermana Monson
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