Hey everybody!
I gotta say the days fly by on the
mission! Every second of the day there is always something for you to be
doing, or someone for you to be helping.
This
week as in the past week my companion and I have been blessed to see the
progress of so many investigators, and less active members. Watching
the difference that the gospel has in the lifes of those with whom we
are working is the sweetest thing. There is a less active member that we
have been visiting for about a month now, who wants to baptize her son
but wasn´t coming to church. But these last two weeks she came to church
and absolutely loved it. The best part was that nearly the entire ward
knew her and went up to her to welcome her. Now that she has been these
two weeks she has also started to get a little bit of the missionary
fire in her. Because it has made her feel so happy again she invited her
father who is also a less active member to come this next week and even
gave a Book of Mormon to her boyfriend! It is so incredible to see the
change that the joy of the Gospel can have in us.
Another
investigator of ours Marcos has promised that he will get married with
his wife so that he can be baptized as soon as possible. Usually
marriage is one of the biggest things that impedes a couple from being
baptized, but when we told Marcos about this commandment he gladly
accepted! Marcos is a close friend of the second counselor in the stake
presidency and has always been a little bit interested in the church but
wasn´t until recently that he really wanted to learn what it takes to
be a ``mormon``. In fact just the other day at church he leaned over to
me and whispered, ``is it okay if I tell people that I am a mormon??`` I
laughed a little bit and said ``oh, yeah, tell EVERYBODY that you are
Mormon!``
In this area I feel that me and my
companions have been so incredible blessed by the hand of the Lord.
And I know that these blessings are coming because of our obedience to
the commandments. In D&C it says the following, ``I, the Lord, am
bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no
promise.`` As we obey the lords commandments he is bound to bless us,
and I can tell you that this is so true.
As I
said my companions and I have been striving to be as obediente as we
can. And these week Elder Ontiveros and I made some more goals on how we
could be even a little bit more obedient and with our goals asked the
Lord in prayer that he would bless us in our work to have more success.
So after a long week of work I truly felt that we had done our best but
unfortunately didn´t have as much success as I was hoping for. As we
were waiting out in front of the church for all of the members and
investigators to arrive, a man showed up that I half recognized. He
asked us if the Church was having its meetings right now and wanted to
participate. We gladly escorted him to the sacrament meeting and helped
to sit with a member,(who he actually happened to know). His name is
william and it turns out that me and my old companion Elder Rojas had
taught him a few times but stopped visiting him because we could never
find him at home. At church William told us that now he wanted to start
frequenting our church!
I know that this was a direct blessing from mine and my companion's efforts to be more obedient to the Lord.
I
love you all and want you all to know that as we strive to be more and
more obedient we will recieve blessings from our Heavenly Father. Trust
in him and not yourselves.
Have a great week!
Elder Rice
