Buena Semana!
(Good Week according to Google Translate) - (Am I the only one who has to go to the internet to understand half the things my daughters are saying lately.) :D
So let me start off by saying that I can't believe how fast the time goes by!! I can't believe that I am going to complete a year in the mission this week!!!! That's crazy talk! I'm totally in denial and I keep telling myself that I have a lot more time left but at the same time I know I need to take advantage of every day every moment I have here. This week was really good!! We were able to have a really special baptism!! Which I'll talk about in a minute. We started the week off good with a NdH with our recent convert at the house of a member who is also a return missionary so it was really powerful the lesson and then we ate a whole bunch of delicious food, like cake and crepes with manjar and other deliciousness. Then the next day we had another NdH with another part member family and we watched The Other Side of Heaven with them to help motivate the fifteen year old daughter of the family come back to church. On wednesday we had another Harvest like we did in our sector but this time in another sector so we got to spend a couple hours just contacting and trying to find good references to give the elders that work in that part. Before we got started they told us that their sector is kind of gangster so we laughed and had the motto "Where's our gangster?" "Where's the one who's ready to make a change. It went really well and we were actually able to enter a house and have a lesson with a woman who initially was not willing to recieve us. I love those moments when the people come out of their houses and at first say no I'm really not interested, or I already have my faith but then we talk to them for a minute, butter them up, and they end up letting us in and changing their attitude completely. We found a woman this week who said she already has her religion and was borderline rude to us but for reasons unkown to us she let us in and even inside was a little curt but after talking with her for awhile she changed her tone and said that she actually is having doubts about her church and would like to better her faith!! THAT is the spirit at it's best! There is a joven from this ward who is going on the mission so this week we had a farewell for him and it was interesting to remember when I was in his shoes and it feels like a year ago :P Seriously though it feels like a LONG time ago. It was funny because I made brownies for the farewell and they turned out just ok because I was rushed in making them, but everyone at the farewell went nuts! Like they were eating mana from heaven or something and so long story short we have plans for about 5 familiy home evenings with members to teach them how to make brownies :P
Saturday was the best day of this week by far! Best day of my whole mission maybe! There's this investigator named Mayra who I taught on my very first day in the mission who is amazing and was ready to be baptized when I first taught her but kept having problems like her parents not approving but she finally got baptized!!! An entire year later and just when I've come back to this sector so I was able to be here! It goes to show that everything we do has an impact even if we don't get to see the fruits of our labors until years later. The baptizm was so amazing and she was so pretty, the best part is that her mom, who initially was not in favor, ended up coming and when Mayra bore her testimony she thanked her mom for being there to support her in the best decision she's ever made and that with her testimony made all of us misionaries sob. Then afterwards she told us that her mom said she felt something special and would like to start receiving the missionaries and she showed up to church this week all by herself!! Mayra doesn't waste anytime either, she wants to go on a mission and she already got started by giving a book of mormon to her friend who also was at her baptizm and came to church! The mission is so cool! This church is so cool! and I love seeing it touch the lives of the people I have come to love!
But wait there's more! That same night we went to see a family of recent converts who are also like my chilean family because I've come to love them so much. They've been struggling recently because el Hno. and the daughter Dani haven't been coming to church for awhile but Sat. night we decided to do something special and so we shared the talk from Elder Hollan "I Believe" had a testimony meeting. Everyone shared their testimony and the spirit was soooo strong. They admitted that for some of them it is still hard for them to accept certain doctrine but they know the church is true and so that's why they keep going to eventually have a testimony strong of everything and the Hno. shared that now he knows that he's been missing out on a really good thing and he wants to return the the church and return strong so that one day he and his family can be sealed in the temple. It was a night of water works because we were all crying again. Then on Sunday for the first time in a couple of months their WHOLE family was in the church again!! I feel like that's part of the reason I came back to this sector, I have a really close bond with this family and maybe that's what it took to get them back but I also have the comfort of knowing that they're not just coming back to make me happy, that they really know what their goal is: the temple. It was such a blessing to see them all there again.
Last night we found a lot of new people wich is also exciting but in a different way. I can't help but look at the people as what they could become if they accept the gospel and so I love the opportunity to find and teach more people.
Today was also really fun because with said family we went to these botanical gardens/petting zoo and took a lot of fun pictures and got to see a bunch of cool animals and birds there and then we drove up to the top of the hill to see all of talca which was pretty even though it was raining.
All in all a good week.
I love hearing about mission opportunities that you all are having and I would just encourage you all to keep going. Even if the people are stubborn, even if at first you're nervous, every missionary act we do is like planting a seed, and we never know when that seed will sprout.
Love you all!!
Hna. Boully
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