February 17, 2014

hey family!

I hope yall are doing great! Congratulations Penny on your first talk in Sacrament meeting; first one of many!!! I cannot believe Texas weather. That is really crazy to go from 30 to 80 in one week. Wow.

Wow, after this week I know that the Lord hears and answers prayers and makes up for weakness. We have been struggling finding new people to teach since a few investigators dropped us and others left on vacation. We never gave up hope though. Tuesday we had district class and did not linger to talk with the other missionaries. We got back to our apartment and two minutes later someone named Marcelo knocked on our door. He just said that someone told him that we could help him. He wanted to know more about God and make certain changes in his life, and wanted to know when he could meet with us. So of course we went right away, had a lesson in the park area of our apartment. It turns out that we had about 5 minutes one day last week and so we were contacting outside of the entrance of our apartment buildings. We ended up contacting Marcelo´s brother, but he was not too interested. But, Tuesday he told his brother (they live on our floor too) to go and talk to us. Crazy how the Lord works right!! If our efforts in finding were not working out, the Lord can help someone contact us haha. He has a baptismal date for the very end of next month, and hopefully everything works out. He has lots of things to change, but with the Gospel anyone can change.

Thursday morning we had intercambios (transfers? changes for one day) and I went with Hermana Sharp to Macul. We were talking to whoever would listen and we found a guy sitting outside of the metro. We started talking to him and he said that he knew ALOT about the church, assisted MANY times and only never got baptized. Situations changed,but was open to listen and loves the church still. We gave him a book of mormon (he lost his). The Lord again placed someone amazing in our path. That basically is the story of this week. The Lord placed people in our path, or the Lord just worked lots of miracles!!!

We had stake conference this week, and we attended the saturday night session for adults. The stake presidency talked about how the five or so of them met together to visit a list of five or six, but when they prayed they felt that they needed to visit an inactive family. The parents are both return missionarys, but their youngest son never got baptized. They said the family lives in Trinidad and I sat there thinking, " No, did they go and visit the Del Castillo family?" The next morning, we saw the Del Castillo family in church for the general session of stake conference and words cannot describe the joy that we felt to see them there!!! We had visited them various times, but they never went to church. The Lord sent the stake presidency, AND THEY CAME!!!! The Lord works miracles!!! we also went to visit Sunday a family that is inactive. The parents have come to church twice now, but the grown kids have not. We had a lesson powerful and direct about keeping the sabbath day holy, and they committed to come to church!!! It is amazing to see the Lord work in the lives of these precious people we visit and talk with everyday. We have also been blessed to feel a little bit of the overwhelming joy that happens when someone returns!!! It is a feeling so amazing, and the best part is that it has nothing to do with me, only the joy to see someone change!!! Oh man I love the mission!!!

I truly love serving the Lord!! There is nothing that brings greater satisfaction than serving the Lord (at least from my experience). I am learning that the biggest challenge to sharing the gospel, is opening our mouths. Also, that the last days are NOW and that there is no time to waste in sharing the Gospel. THEY NEED IT NOW!!!! Also, that there is always someone there ready to listen, or ready to have the seed planted or ready to listen so that they can tell someone else that the missionaries can help them so they should go knock on their door. Thank yall so much for writing me and for your prayers! They help a lot!!!

con mucho amor,

Hermana Taylor