We're seeing so many miracles pop up lately. As hard as the work still is...J_____ is a joven (young man) who’s 15 and he's been to the church in the past and is family of the branch president here and he wants to get baptized!!! He's already got asistencia (been attending Sunday meetings), we just need to teach him everything! We challenged him to be baptized yesterday and he accepted! He already read the introduction of the LDM (Book of Mormon) that we left him and even read the part in Moroni at the bottom! Super prepared este joven! So he'll get baptized this Saturday! We'll have to work so hard to teach him everything, but it felt like we were teaching a member, he's super smart and ready. All we needed was his mom's permission, but his sister talked with her and came up to us on Sunday. I was thinking, "Oh no, she's going to tell us that his mom wont let him". When she was like "Hablé con la mama y dijo que sí!" I started freaking out and high fiving my comp, it was so great. So we're working on keeping the mom's trust and showing her that her son really is prepared.
K_____ came to church again this Sunday so it looks like we might be baptizing 3 weeks in a row! :) How great would that be?! The zone ended up with a retention porcentaje de 78. My ZL was pretty upset I think, but I know that the zone worked really hard. It will be ok and we'll reach 80 the next month! :)
D______ got baptized! Finally! It was a small service but everything went well and everyone helped out! She looked great and Sunday she came to church in a modest skirt and I know her family is feeling great, after so long of wanting her to get baptized! :)
But Sunday we had something unexpected happen. We showed up with K_____ about 8:40 and we said hi to some people, went to the bathroom, but then we went into the chapel to sit down. I saw the counselor of the President sitting up there waiting for the meeting to start. This man is so great, so sweet, and gentle. He stood out to me from the beginning. Everyone always talks about how nice he is. So I saw him sitting there and I was going to just wave and smile to him and sit down, but for some reason I felt I needed to go up and say hi to him...So we did. We chatted a bit and then he let us know that he had waited for us to come to the house since we said we wanted to go visit him. We hadn’t ever set a solid day or time, but since the last change I told my comp I wanted to go visit him, I didn’t know why, I just did. So we apologized and said we would set a day and time :)That afternoon we got a call from our ward mission leader letting us know he wouldn’t be able to go to a cita with J______ with us...because he needed to take care of a kid at his house. Everything was fine until he asked if we had heard that someone had died. I couldn’t hear him very well and thought he was joking so I put it on speaker phone so my comp could help me. That’s when we realized he was talking about the counselor and how he had died. I knew he had had heart problems, but it sounds like he didn’t feel well at church, was given a blessing and left in a taxi for his house, but then died later. I was heartbroken. This man was always so nice. His wife wasn’t a member and his kids were all inactive, but there he was , a strong counselor in a little rama (branch) of T______. We went the 6 missionaries to the little viewing that night at his house. We showed up to see a big white tent put up with a bunch of guys playing dominoes and drinking and smoking. There were soo many people. We talked with the wife and held her hand for a bit while she talked. We didn’t stay too long since we had to cross the river. The viewing was always a little scary for me but it was good that we went.
We had crossed that river the last change with the President and his wife and their nieto. It was amazing to think that people cross that river all the time just to get to the church. People here make so many sacrifices it’s not even funny. Maybe they’re not all very good at sacrificing time, but the strong members sacrifice a lot. It was neat to cross that river with everyone helping the other.
Another time that sticks out in my mind with that hermano, is when we were all together for correlation and he was there. Sometimes he wasn’t able to be there because of his heart, but at the same time, his heart was there...ya know? That’s the effect some people can have on others, to where their heart is still there even though they aren’t physically there. Interesting :) But I remember that we finished the meeting by singing "Guíame O Salvador". The President directed it and he loves singing. The Spirit was so strong and now every time I sing or hear that song, I think of that night. Listening to all the strong leaders there sing their hearts out. They put up with so much and make so many sacrifices and give it their all. That hymn seriously makes me tear up every time. Some things come as a surprise and others don’t, but in the end, El Salvador will guide us and help us. He always has and He always will. It’s not about us, and He helps us see that. This isn’t my time, it’s His time. Even though life is hard and things can be confusing, Christ is perfect and God's love for us is perfect.Happy New Year :)
Love,
Hermana Despain
