Hola familia querida!
how are yall doing? Are yall enjoying the heat up there in the United States? Here we had a couple of days just lovely, a little taste of spring in the middle of winter. We enjoyed the break from the cold A LOT!
This week we passed by a contact we made named Soledad. She has 3 teenagers and listened to missionaries about 15 years ago when her kids were little. She is very receptive and could not come to church this week but hopefully the next.
Hermana Ekins and I are trying to invite all of the young women to go out with us for an hour every week. We go into the Young Womens room every sunday and they tell us when they can. Many times they cancel on us at the last minute, but when they do go out with us it is great! It is great seeing the progress in a couple of girls that have gone out with us two times now and how they are getting less shy every time. It is also great to bring them because the people see that the youth of our church are really great and the difference that the Gospel makes in the lives of the kids.
We have been working a lot with a teenager that got baptized a year and a half ago named Joel. He is the only member in his family and it is hard to find him or his family because they are always working in their family store. We started working with one of his aunts this week named Evelín. She is really great and is open too. We just have to be able to find her to share with her. She has a 12 year old daughter too and yesterday we gave her a book of mormon. She just said, "wow thanks! This book is really cool! I saw Joel reading it the other day." We will be working with her too so that she can help her mom progress too.
Also we are working with the older sister of another recent convert teenager. It was great because before she did not really want to listen to us, but we passed by and her brother was not home and she still let us in. We shared the book of mormon with her and she all of a sudden, was very receptive. Hopefully she will continue to lsiten to us.
Friday we visited another recent convert who is inactive. I came here to Apoquindo last year in exchanges and we met Luis and taught him a lesson. Back then he was active. The other missionaries were giving up hope on him, but I had been praying for him when i got here and found out that he is inactive now. It took us 3 weeks to find him, but we finally did. He said that he does want to return. We shared a lesson about the Atonement, that there is NOTHING that we can do that is not covered by the atonement. The atonement truly is for everyone. I also shared that i have been praying for him and that the Lord loves him. The Spirit was really strong in the lesson and he said that he would come to church.
Saturday we had a ton of appointments and ALL of them fell through. It was hard but we found some cool people too. After the last one fell through we decided to pray there int he street. We were going to visit a family up in the rich part of our sector as the last thing that night, and we just decided to contact and to walk instead of take the bus, up the big giant hill where they live. We found a couple of receptive people. We decided to knock on a few doors in the rich part of the sector (really, they are rich people, seriously). Most of them said no right away but we tried one house and the housekeeper came out. We asked if she was ok and she said no. Her name is Rosa and she said that she had always talked to the missionaries in Peru but her work never let her go to church. We taught her about prayer and then prayed with her. We also gave her a book of mormon and she hugged it tightly to her and gave us big hugs of gratitude. We will visit her again this week and she said that she wants to go to church. Almost always it is the last house or last person that is receptive. I cannot count how many times this has happened in my mission.
Sunday morning we had many people that said that they would come to church. We called about 10 people and most of them di dnot answer and the others said that they could not come. We passed by 4 people´s houses, in the rain, literally running so that we could pass by for all of them and NO ONE opened the door, or they said that they could not come. We were a little discouraged, but we got on the bus, wet and went to church. We just prayed to get there before the sacrament, and we got there right at the end of the sacrament hymn. This was a tender mercy fo the lord thats for sure. Sometimes people get to use their agency and it makes our lives as missionaries a little bit harder when they do not choose to listen to us, or to come to church. But that is ok. We fought hard in heaven before this earth for the power to choose. I am grateful to have agency but other people´s agency is harder to appreciate though haha. I cannot imagine how frustrated the Lord is with our poor choice of agency. I cannot complain.
I absolutely love being here in the mission! Even with disappointments and bumps in the road, it is so incredibly gratifying serving the Lord and the people of Chile. We are seeing little miracles everyday and learning lots. I am learning how important and wide ranging the Atonement is. We truly can use the atonement for everything in our lives, to heal us from all the heartbreak. I know that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. I am so grateful for his sacrifice. I know that Heavenly Father lives and loves us too!!! I love yall!!!! Apply the Atonement in your lives and share the great news with everyone else!!!
con mucho amor,
Hermana Taylor
No comments:
Post a Comment