Week 32

Wow what a week! We went to San Pedro this morning to play soccer with the other missionaries this morning, so I don't have much time to write this week :( I'll try to fit in the highlights though.

 

The story begins this past Tuesday, where our Zone Leaders had a special meeting with all of the zone to motivate us for the month of July. You see, the Merendon Zone (which right now includes me) has been struggling pretty bad the last few months. So we put down some goals for how many baptisms each area would have this next month. There's a lot of pressure in these situations, so everyone puts down the best-case scenario for their areas. This means that each area is planning between 4-8 baptisms. Our goal of 6 baptisms for the month of July took a major blow the very next day, when a family of 5 moved to a different area in San Pedro. Sadly, they were 5 of the 6 baptisms we had planned. But we kept the faith. We said that if we work as hard as possible, the Lord will bless us to achieve our goal. And I now have a testimony that the Lord works in mysterious ways. Our top investigator that we had planned to baptize this next Saturday didn't come to church. But in her place, eight people came for the first time (two were people we had never met before that the members invited). Needless to say, we were feeling pretty good Sunday morning. Later in the day, we received a call from a member that had found a family of 7. Apparently, the missionaries had visited them previously, and even baptized two of the children. But for some reason, the missionaries stopped visiting them. The member told us that the parents want the missionaries to come back and start teaching them again. Is it a sign? A family of 5 leaves, and then a family with 5 baptismal candidates pops up? I guess we'll find out this week. But the good news is that the work is back on track here in San Marcos. This doesn't mean everything is perfect, but we're at least moving in the right direction.

 

Also, we had a multi-zone conference on Wednesday! Our mission president gave an awesome talk on the Atonement, and then we watched a video of a talk that Elder Holland gave at the MTC, where he spoke about the need to convert ourselves first before we convert others. It was pretty inspiring, and it made a big difference in the week. For those who didn't already know, Elder Holland is pretty amazing.

 

Ok that's it for this week! Hopefully, this inspires everyone to get involved in the missionary work wherever you are in the world. Have a happy 4th of July and celebrate a little extra to make up for my absence :) Buenos tardes y ¡que le vaya bien!