Buenas tardes familia y amigos,
The results are in.....my new companion is Elder Barillas. He comes from a
chosen people. He´s from Guatemala! He´s 18 years old. He´s the first missionary
in his family and he is a convert of 3 years to the church. He has a very strong
testimony and he likes working, so I am more than happy to be training him. All
of the members here are really surprised because he looks really young but he is
very mature and awesome.
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| Elder Williams with his new "son" Elder Barillas. |
I picked him up on Tuesday and we went to work right away and we taught the
son in law of a less active couple in our ward. The son in law was really
interested in how the gospel could help his son stop doing drugs.
The next day, we taught so many people!!! We found a new family of 5. The
dad of that family has a friend who is a member of the church and he had an
idea of what we did as missionaries, so he let us in right away. We taught he
and his wife the Restoration, and they were really interested and they said they
would read the Book of Mormon. Recently our mission president has told us to
change how we do baptismal commitments. There are so many misinterpretations of
the word baptism here. He has asked us to invite people to "join" the church
instead of "baptism". He wants us to really explain what baptism is before we
invite people to do it. it's different but we are doing it, and we did that
invitation with the family we found, and they accepted.
We taught P and J with members that same day. It is going to be
impossible for J to go to church until she can move out of her dad´s
house, but she has plans to be moving out soon. P is doing okay. She still
feels like she hasn't had a confirmation about needing to baptized. We did find
out that her nephew is actually a member of the church, and he wants to baptize
her, so she has some additional support from that side.
We found a Peruvian couple that night. The sister of the lady from the
couple just arrived from Peru, and she is a less active member. It was funny to
meet her because it was kind of like "no matter where you go you´ll always find
the gospel".
Not a lot was done on Thursday. We had another training meeting. We visited
a lot of members and contacted some people. That night we went to bed at the
right hour, but then we woke up when we heard the giant firework show that Renca
puts on on the hill right next to our house.
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| Climbing Renca Hill. |
On Friday, we had a great meeting with the Bishop and his family and we
made some plans and goals with them so they could invited their friends to
church this month. It's awesome to work with the members and use the planning
skills we have as missionaries to help the members set goals and then verify
with them to help them reach their goals.
On Saturday we and our elders quorum president helped a Dominican lady move
into her new house. We got there and she had everything ready and done, so we
just taught her the Restoration instead. It was a nice lesson and it looks like
she´ll be going to church soon.
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| District White Elephant party. |
On Sunday, we had 3 investigators at church. Esteban, a 13 year old we´ve
taught came. We taught him and his older sister on Saturday night. The older
sister Yiseña isn't too interested, but Esteban was really interested, so he came
to church. P came to church. and the Haitian friend of our elders quorum
president came. Elder Barillas introduced himself and his testimony was really
powerful. The Haitian investigator, Rafael, also bore his testimony. He bore it
for a while and didn't really understand what the purpose was. He testified of Christ and he mentioned he needed a job about 7 times.
That afternoon we taught another new family. The dad was really interested
in the Book of Mormon and eternal families. Every new lesson that we have had
this week has ended in a kneeling prayer (excluding the lesson with the Dominican lady because she has a very rocky floor) and the father of the family
offered it. It was awesome! We really hope these people progress.
That´s it for this week. There were a lot of things that happened. new
companions, new people, same Spirit, same message. I really love being a
missionary. Ive grown so close to the Lord this year and my life has been filled
with His light. I understand my life more. I understand that what was once "my
life" needs to be His. I am dedicating myself to Him every day more and
more.
Love,
Elder Williams
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