Letter From August 10th

"Man, I think I must have a mental disease because I literally don't think I did anything since the last time I wrote you, because it literally feels like yesterday. I know I did stuff though, since we literally have every hour of the day planned every day, still, sometimes it feels like we accomplished nothing! Nevertheless I'll try and delve into those memory banks and pull out something. Let's just say that the last two weeks have been kind of rough. One of our solid investigators has started to kind of drop off of the map... She was doing really well, but every time we mention baptism she just kind of jumps away from it. We think it's a combination of influence from her husband and the fact that she believes it will bring her under condemnation to be baptized more than once. We've tried to explain, but so far she's showing little progress in that area. She went so far to say "no me bautizo", just straight up, or I will not be baptized. So we're hoping to get her to the visitors center to help her feel the spirit so the spirit can help her realize she needs to be rebaptized!

Then we had a ward activity that was pretty cool, unfortunately no one invited their non-member friends, but we did have some less actives come that hadn't been for quite awhile, so that was a success.

We did have some cool miracles on Sunday though! We had two investigators at church! We had this one lady that wasn't showing too much interest, but thanks to Elder Lee we ran by there before church anyways and she ended up coming, staying all three hours, and really enjoying it! That was super exciting, and we're teaching her and her son tonight, so hopefully it continues to go well! Then we had this other guy come that is the boyfriend of a less active member that has kind of gone seriously off the path. This Returned missionary in the ward invited her to come to church and she came, bringing her non-member boy friend who is now a new investigator! Yay for member work! He's a really cool guy! His path to baptism may be a long one just because he's got quite a lot of stuff to fix up, but he's willing and we're excited to see him change.

Other than that not too much happened. Just a lot of running around trying to get a hold of people and talking to a lot of people."

"We're doing a purification process that I think I told you about in the last letter where we make a list of things we will and will not do each day and then report to the Lord each night. That's been cool, it's been cool to see God remind me of each of those things each time I do them, and I've been getting better already in just these last three or four days. It's been cool and I'm excited to do it for the full 40! Anyways that's about it.

Oh, one other thing I'll share from this week was that in District meeting we all shared some miracles we'd seen in ourselves over the last few transfers. Since I shared with the District I figured I should share with the family as well ;) Two of the miracles I've seen is that number one I've learned more and more what it means to be unshakeable in our testimonies. That was one of my greatest worries before the mission that I wouldn't be able to say with utmost certainty that I knew the Book of Mormon was true, etc. Well, that definitely changed. God has granted me a testimony to the point where I can say with utmost certainty that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that this is His church on the Earth. So one of my miracles was learning more what it means to be unshakeable.

My second miracle was that God has really really humbled me. As you know I've always considered myself to be somewhat independent, never completely so, but I like to do things on my own a lot of the time. Well, as we know, it's impossible to do that on a mission. Especially these last two transfers I've learned what it means to really be driven to your knees because you know that the tasks of the day ahead of you are just too much for you to bear and you have to hand it all over to the Lord. That's happened a lot, and I can testify that the Lord does indeed take the burden, and He will help us to carry it. We are completely worthless, we literally do nothing. All we have to do is let God and Christ take over. Our job is merely to step out of the way, lower our pride, and let God work through us. That's been a miracle that I continue to keep seeing. So those are two of the big changes I've seen in myself on the mission. Anyways that's the week!"