That was my attempt to find the exclamation point on this keyboard. Some wise guy thought it would be funny to mix up all the keys in the internet cafe. He also put inappropriate pictures on the computer wallpapers. I just replaced mine with a picture of the Asunción temple. :)
Anyways... thank you Dad, Mom, Sarah, Ashley, Grandma Springer, and the Straddlings for your letters to me this week. Oh, and Jared, Naiya and Eva, I got your letters in the mail on Wednesday! They made me so so happy. I love you all so much. Getting mail really is the happiest.
Well, second to baptisms, of course. :) This week, we had that baptism of the member whose records got lost. For once, it was a perfectly normal, problem free, peaceful baptism. It kind of threw us off, actually, to have everything go according to schedule and be in and out of the chapel within the hour. :) But it really was a nice service. Her less active daughter and ex husband came to support her, as well as her immediate family and friends. The Hermanas and I sang "Our Savior´s Love," and Aurora (the woman getting baptized) cried with happiness. Since she hasn´t had the practice of doing baptisms for the dead, she was nervous about doing everything right in the font. It all went no problem, though. Pretty much the first time I´ve seen someone only have to go under the water one time.
Everything should be good to go for Blanca to be baptized next weekend, too. She really is such a sweetheart. The other day we taught her about the Plan of Salvation, and she was like, "I´m gonna get baptized so we can be neighbors forever in the Celestial Kingdom!" She´s so cute, and very intelligent. One time this week we went in to teach her about the Ten Commandments, and before we started she told us about how the Virgencita healed her little cousin. We nervously said, "Oh...um...we´re gonna talk about that today." I was worried that Blanca would get all offended once we started telling her that worshipping saints and idols is wrong. Instead, she was like, "Yeah...it really makes sense. The saints and angels can´t do anything without God, right? So why would we give them the credit? That would make God really sad."
I also talked to Hna. Tua´one this morning, and she said that things are going excellent in Mariano. She baptized Teodocio (after many many ups and downs, he was coming along great right before I left), and Nasario and Rosana are set to go on the 17th. She said Nasario has really sobered down and was really depressed when I left. He told her that the missionaries are the only real friends that he´s ever had, and he wants to do all it takes to be baptized and be a part of the LDS family. I´m so happy for him. I need to write to him...
This last week we found a new investigator named Victor Hugo (no, I highly doubt his parents named him after the awesome Les Miserables author). He´s an older man, and we found him because we were trying to find his mom who we´d contacted on the street. Turns out she´s one of those "SOY CATOLICA!!!" women, so she hides from us. But Victor happily let us in. He said that nine months ago he broke away from the Catholic church, recognizing that he didn´t feel close to Christ there. Now he´s church hunting. Que suerte for us. :) The last time we visited him he actually told us that he´d prayed to God for a sign to lead him to the truth...the same day that we clapped his door. We´ve mostly just talked about the Restoration with him, and he´s being kind of difficult. He pretty much said last time that if it wasn´t for the fact that God might have sent us as his sign, he´d probably just dismiss us as crazies. He reads the Book of Mormon, but he keeps nitpicking at it. ("Most of the Witnesses of the Book of Mormon were Smith´s relatives." "This story about Nephi sounds a lot like Abraham...not very original...") He´s a very smart guy, and he knows a LOT about the Bible. Sadly, though, that means that he knows all the anti=Mormon scriptures, about how there can´t be more scripture and how prophets were only a thing of the past, etc. But every time we talk with him, I just feel that he is so ready for the gospel. He is so smart and so sincere in his search for the Truth. He´s also very open to our explanations, and he seems really impressed with our efforts to just get him to learn from God, not from us. I pray so hard when we talk with him. Every time I´m not speaking, I´m just praying, "Heavenly Father, PLEASE help us say the right words." It really feels like an open war with the Adversary. If he just opens his heart a little bit, I KNOW that God will help him to feel that we´re teaching the truth. I just pray so hard that the next time we teach him, he´ll have softened up.
Oh yeah, and we had zone conference this week with Pte. Arnold, our Area Seventy (he spoke in conference a few years ago and told that story about the "stupid cow!" that stuck its head through the fence and died from eating wheat). It was such an amazing day. Pte. Arnold didn´t turn out to be nearly as mean as everyone made him up to be. He was actually really full of praise for our group. He said the mission has improved a lot since the last time he came six months ago, and he gave us great counsel for how to do even better. What really touched me the most was how he told us that he was giving us a clean slate. He wasn´t going to assume that we were going to do poorly. He was going to trust us to take what we learned and go change who we were and what we did to conform to the Lord´s will. He says we´ve got obedience down, but now we need to work on personal sacrifice until we finally come to consecrate everything we are to the Work.
Hna. Madariaga also spoke, and she read a lot of scriptures out of DyC 6, but she put our names into the verses. The next day, I wrote out that whole section, inserting my own name into each verse. It was amazing how powerfully that hit me. It was like receiving revelation straight from God to me, and I realized how true it is that the scriptures were written for US, not just for those who received it years ago.
Pte. Madariaga showed us how to ask references from the members. We practiced it that night with a menos activo family, and it worked so well! We gave each family member a blank piece of paper and had them write down the names of everyone they know who isn´t a member. When they ran out of names, we had them put stars next to those who live in our area. Then we talked with each family member, one by one, about their names and when we could visit them and what they needed, etc. It really created a lot more enthusiasm for reference=giving than we usually see. It was such an efficient tactic. We´re gonna have to do that again once we run out of those first names. It´s definitely something we need to do sparingly, though.
A funny story about this week before I sign off. Hna. Young just learned the other day that when people say, "How are you?" in Guaraní, she´s been responding for the last ten months, "I´m pretty!" Gotta be careful with pronunciation. :)
Well, time to go again, sadly. I´m so glad that I still have eleven whole months in Paraguay. It´s sad how fast the last eight months have gone. I can´t believe that Joan and Hollis are almost done with their mission! I still remember so well going to their farewell! I´m glad the hurricane didn´t ruin this last month for them, though.
Take care everyone, and thank you again so much for your letters and your prayers. I LOVE YOU!!
==Hna. Springer
No comments:
Post a Comment