Thank you for your prayers.

June 23, 2014

This week started out playing soccer.... as usual. The United States won! .... which surprisingly, brought a lot of nasty comments. On Sunday half of our members didn’t even come to church. I was super excited though. The rest of the day passed normally until we went to meet with the family Haro. They are the family which we just baptized. The family was waiting for us sitting down with the two sons who have never listened to us before (Alberto y Diego). Alberto hasn’t left the house in 3 years. They came out to the living room and they sat down to listen to us. They commented how their Dad was a changed man. A friend came by with a thing of beer to watch the game and then the Dad sent his little boy out with a sol. Shortly later he came back with some soda and the Dad said “why don’t we drink some of this instead”. His son again commented on how his dad had changed; so much that he never believed it could happen. They both are now reading the Book of Mormon. One has accepted a baptism date.

Miercoles we got some interesting news, the mission is sending a bunch of missionaries out, almost 100 missionaries from Peru and the surrounding areas for visa problems, including missionaries from my group. I’m praying for them and also I’m super grateful to be staying where I’m staying.

Wednesday was a work visit and we found a new family. Thursday there was a member whose family told us he was drinking. We had been teaching his family dia de reposo but we wanted to touch on the drinking subject, though just not sure how. We went to his house said a prayer and when we finished we asked him if he wanted to go to the temple? He responded, “Yes, but first Elders, I’ve got to quit drinking and start paying my tithing and going to church”. Lessons are a lot easier when the Spirit teaches them.

We visited a family and invited them to be baptized. They didn’t know. It was a little rough but he said they’d pray about it. We gave a lesson with a family who started fighting in the middle of the lesson and just cut us off and turned on the television watching the virgin maria... We kind of just snuck out without being noticed :) They weren’t paying much attention. We’re going to go back another day a little earlier before their program comes on :)

The next day we visited with a member preparing for their mission. That was a great day. Then we had another meeting with the family Haro. 6 people came from the ward to support them. That was super wonderful! We taught about the sacerdocio (sacrament?) then we played some fun games :)

The next day, Saturday, we went and talked to the hno pauca. (The family we invited to be baptized and they were going to pray about it.) He said mas adelenate but that he felt really peaceful. We told him this was an answer and he said he’d try. I opened the scriptures and said a prayer and then came across Moroni 7:30… If you have faith you will have the power to do anything that’s prudent. It was an answer to my prayers and the man who read it and said he needed to go to church Sunday.

Domingo (Sunday) almost no one came to church except hno pauca. He stayed long enough for the first talk. It really touched him he said. Our recent convert received the priesthood. We visited his house and he taught his 30 year old son how to pray and then they read the Book of Mormon together. In his prayer the only thing he asked of God was to bless his brother in the mission. It was a great day! We visited 2 new people, placed almost 25 Books of Mormon this week, had 13 new people (all families), 7 lessons with a member…. It was a great week. Although our consejo de la rama has almost become inactive and no one has been to church for 3 weeks. At the beginning of the week it started out easy to complain but I learned quickly that a happy face and a lot of prayers helps. I felt your prayers this week and thank you so much for everything. It was wonderful and I’m happy and grateful to be here.

Elder Grow