Well this past week had its ups and downs for sure. We had great lessons and worked really hard but unfortunately our investigator that was supposed to be baptized this week wont be ready to be baptized this Saturday. We were bummed because we had finally gotten him to the point of preparing for a specific date, but we know that we cant take away his agency. We are praying for him and Im sure that he will still be baptized soon.
We also are teaching a lot of youth that need permission from their parents and I swear we had like 4 appointments this week where we went to ask the parents for permission and each one said no for various reasons: wants their child to be 18 to make the decision, wants them to keep attending their church, etc. But were not letting that get us down because we also have been finding some really prepared people that have accepted the invitation to be baptized. For example, we had a lesson with this one guy yesterday and he is seriously a future bishop... just wait haha. So even though some people that we have been teaching for ages fall through, I know that there are always people out there to find who the Lord has prepared to accept the Gospel. We just have to "put our shoulders to the wheel"!
Last Monday we had a pretty chill p-day because we had all the Elders and Hermanas from our zone in our pensionistas house and watched Up and Despicable Me, which was fun and relaxing. This Monday we had "P-day de Hermanas" in La Molina so we got to have two p-days this week! Half of the hermanas in our mission had p-day this Monday and the rest will have it next week. We all went to President Ardilas house and ate lunch, heard some messages from the Hermanas Lideres and watched TANGLED! I was stoked, but it wasnt as great in Spanish haha. Still awesome though... the first song took me back to the morning before I was set apart and entered the MTC because I listened to it like a hundred times while I was packing. WHEN WILL MY LIFE BEGIN?! (The last "worldly" song I listened to before becoming a missionary)... I was so excited to go. So that was an enjoyable day, I got to see a lot of people I havent seen in a while and being in Presidents house was awesome. We got back kinda late but we had a Family Home Evening with Hermana Patrocinia and Gabriela and the neighbors upstairs so we werent too stressed out, haha. Hna Patrocinia made "picarones" which are basically Peruvian sweet potato donuts covered in a honey-type sauce.... SO GOOD. So that ended sweetly :)
This week I also had another of what I will call an "American Encounter. "We were looking for a reference and knocked on a door and a tall white guy answered. He told us what he knew about the woman we were looking for (in English) and I introduced myself and thanked him for helping us. He was really rude at first as he asked what religion we are from and said we'd have a tough sell with him and his girlfriend (?) because they are evangelical christian missionaries and started questioning me on a bunch of stuff, trying to get me to contradict myself. I felt like Amulek with Zeezrom. I just kept a smile on my face and tried really hard to be polite. I wanted to just say "thanks for your time" and walk away, but as I prayed in my heart to be able to answer his questions well (because I dont have nearly as much knowledge of the Bible as he has) I felt like we should stay. He then went on to "warn" me of a bunch of end-of-the-world stuff and I just tried to respect his beliefs and listen. Somehow the whole spirit of the converstation shifted as we talked about how there is a lot of wickedness in the world but that if we make Christ our foundation we can overcome the world as he did. I just tried to find all the common ground that I could with him and we talked about Christ for a good 30 minutes, while Hermana Avendaño listened (she understands English). He changed and started to smile. He stopped trying to tear down my religion and noticed many things that we have in common and even said things like, "I love the Mormons because they teach their kids this.." or because we use the King James Bible, things like that. We had spent a while there and I thought surely this should count as a lesson for our key indicatiors! So I felt prompted to ask him and the other missionary if we could all pray together before we left. He LOVED the idea and all four of us knelt down and prayed. It was one of the most spiritual experiences Ive had on my mission and Im grateful for the opportunity that I had to meet them. I didn't change their beliefs but I think now they have a better view of our church.
I KNOW this is true. As I told this American guy, I have had my prayers answered and I know that this is the Restored Gospel. I'm out of time but I love yall!!
Hermana Bledsoe
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| mis hijas :) |
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| pday de hermanas! |
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