Dear Family



Dear Family!

  This week was incredibly overwhelming, emotionally demanding. We had successes:

1) A lady we had stopped visiting came to church on Sunday and basically told us, "You stopped coming to my house, so I had to get to church on my own!" She'd never been to church before, but loved it! She says she really felt like it was a family.

2) We went to give a blessing to our investigator, Lupita, because she was feeling really ill. We also confirmed that she DOES want to get baptized! She just wants to make sure that afterwords she doesn't become the same person she was. It'll take some prayer and repentance.

3) We met a woman whose name is Señorina (not señorita). She was telling us all about her four children who are grown up. She says it's time to start investigating to find the true church. She doesn't believe it's the Catholic. I showed her a photo of our family and she said, "Your mom looks so latina!" Funny. "She's from Chile," I said.

4) We are teaching a guy named Jose Manuel who got in an accident at work a few months ago and now he doesn't have his legs. It's inspiring how happy he is. He really is so optimistic. I love that he really enjoys reading the Book of Mormon. The funny thing is that when he read about Nephi killing Laban, he understood that it's okay to kill someone if they're not keeping the commandments. Um.. No. We had to explain why it was that Nephi killed him. Kind of worrying ahah.

5) We are planning on teaching a few families. I hope that eventually we can baptize a family. Do you know how long it's been since I baptized?! It's a little ridiculous. But all the families seem really cool. There's one that I love in particular because they have five young kids. They told me that they do worry about their future, whether they'll get involved in the mud of the world or stay clean. I know that really the Gospel can be that foundation on which to build their happy family.

    Unfortunately, this week we had a lot of rough times as well:

1) A man named Carlos, who we'd been teaching for a month now, suddenly started to hide from us. His whole family is lying, saying that he's away on a business trip, but Elder Padgett SAW him in the back room! Everyone here lies to us. WHY?! Just be HONEST. I have no respect for people who can't just admit that they're NOT interested.

2) Manuel didn't get baptized this week. His mom suffers from depression, and so she has no strength or courage to go against what her family says. Her ex-husband is threatening to cut her off if Manuel gets baptized. She doesn't trust that if that were to happen, somehow Heavenly Father would provide money and food. Because it's BAPTISM. No one could return to Him without baptism. Even Jesus Christ had to be baptized.

3) Yesterday we had a horrible day getting people to church. No one came except Cristina (above, also called Crespina), who we had quit visiting. Basically Elder Padgett and I had a conversation in which he told me (basically) that I haven't worked as hard as I could've, but now he's here and we're going to. Um..  I have been working SO hard. I have been trying to give it my ALL. To give up everything except communication with family and friends. Elder Parry and I worked just as hard and somehow didn't baptize. So it makes me wonder what the difference will be when we do start baptizing. My guess is the people. Different people. But whatever. My mind is racing as I think about everything that doesn't make sense to me, but I trust that if I keep working hard, things will work out. I'll figure it all out.

And now for two funny stories:

  1) Elder Padgett contacted someone in spanish but with an english accent. And they started to make fun of him! And then when I started to talk, my accent was the same as his! Ah! I didn't mean to! So funny

   2) The other week we saw a chihuahua in some bushes, and we both thought, "ew, it's so ugly." Later that week we walked passed the bushes again and the same chihuahua was there, but dead. An old man/gardener was trying to remove it from the bushes. Sick.

   I love you!

Love,
Elder Poirier