Week 86

This week was challenging as my companion was sick for 2 days. I was able to continue visiting our investigators and finding new people however, with the help of Lucas. Because of much rain during the week, the roads became a slushy mud mess:

Thursday was a holiday of some sort so the branch held an activity at the Caracol waterfall park. There they held a barbeque:

We also had interviews with President Campos the next day which is my favorite part of every 3 months. During the first part of the interview my companion and I asked him how come we weren't having success in baptizing a billion people after all the changes we'd made in our work, the way we teach, follow up, use the Book of Mormon, and take the Spirit to the hearts of our investigators. His response gave us much hope and desire to keep it up and excercise faith. He said, "Elders, you don't know the ways of the Lord. You think in a certain way have certain desires and expect certain results. The Lord has others. The best thing you can do is ask 'what else can we do?' instead of 'why didn't it happen the way we wanted it to?' and continue working with faith. The Lord will bless you in the way He desires, and in His time." Inspiring words that lifted us up to continue on.

On Saturday we found a man named Adriano with our own age who listened intently. At first we thought he wasn't even paying attention as he didn't look at us as we taught. However, after we asked him a few questions he surprised us with what he'd taken out of our message. As we presented the Book of Mormon he interrupted us, grabbing the book and asking if he could keep it to read it later that day.

That same night we finished with our plans to visit people and looked at the time. It was 8 o´clock and it would take 30 minutes to walk back to our house so we decided to try and find one more house to teach in to try and find an elect as we hadn't had much luck all week. We looked up and decided to knock on the very next door in front of us. A man named Ramon opened the door and when we introduced ourselves he responded automatically that he had a different religion. Yet when we invited him one more time to listen to our life-changing message he let us in. He is 20 and called his 19 year old wife Diana to come listen as well. My companion began to teach about prophets and the priesthood quickly. Then when I asked them what they had understood about prophets they responded without hesitation, "They are men called of God to preach repentence that have authority to baptize those who desire to follow Christ." Impressed with their understanding after an quick explanation I began to teach about Joseph Smith and the Restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ. I spoke slowly and quietly and the Spirit was palpable. My companion finished by teaching about the Book of Mormon and Ramon then asked us, "How can I know more about this church?" At that moment a million answers came into our heads but we were moved to invite them to go to church the very next day and to be baptized in the coming week. Moved upon by the Spirit they accepted in a heartbeat. After we left their house we called up President Campos and thanked him for the encouragement he'd given us as the Lord had truly blessed us.