sleeve weather now
This week kinda flipped on us. Mikey's mom hasn't been returning our
texts, calls and we haven't had a lesson for a week. Maria didn't come
to church again, which was too bad because we know she wants to its
just hard to make something happen. Gloria is in Mexico right now and
no one seems to know when she'll be back or how to contact her. So in
one swoop, all of our people on date are now up in the air. Good time
to work hard and hang on.
Despite those sad setbacks, good things happened.
Guatemalans
A family from the English ward called us to get some help moving. They
wanted us to get to know their neighbors who speak no English and were
planning on helping the move. First, best move I've ever helped with.
Everything was nicely packed into bins and categorized by weight and
fragility. Night and day to some of the evictions we've seen. Second,
the Guatemalan family is really nice and have serious potential. The
mans name is Micho and came from Guatemala about 7 months ago. He's
interested in the English classes going one twice a week and wants us
to come back. We plan on stopping by tonight to give him info on the
English class and hopefully a return appointment.
Lorena
She's an investigator who's been on the back burner because she needs
to get a divorce before she can get married before she can get
baptized. That's the case with five couples we're working with,
there's just not much we can do about that. However, we decided to
invite her and Elias to go check out the Mesa Temple Visitors Center
with us to help give them motivation to do these hard things. When we
stopped by Saturday night, she told us she had just decided to live
her life in accordance with the baptismal questions. "Just a small
thing but I'm proud" she told us. Haha it was cool. Feeling good about
her specially since she came to church again even though Elias had to
work. If people can work to keep the commitments we give them, it's a
good indicator they'll be good at keeping covenants as well. We see
the people who, when invited to repent and change, see it as a hard
thing and slowly drift away from us.
It was a big shock to pull up Facebook this week and see the news of
Sadie Wells' passing. Life truly is unpredictable and has its
highlows. I thought to myself as I was feeling sad, "Isn't this the
good news that we bring though? To lift up the discouraged and
helpless and enlarge the understanding we have of the plan of
salvation. Think about how you feel right now Elder Bryan, now think
about how you would feel if you didn't have this. That's why you have
to be diligent in sharing the gospel with everyone you meet and pass
by. It's about 'helping Everyone come unto Christ' now go out there
and share it."
I love how I feel when I have spiritual experiences. I've noticed that
I have them more often and strong when it's helping others and seeing
the light come into people's eyes as they accept what is being taught
to their hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Love,
Elder Bryan
February 7 2016
On Date
Gloria and Mikey are progressing really well. Gloria
walks to church
and is positive despite getting some flax from her extended family
that she lives with. Mikey and his family are solid, even though it
takes a while to get started for our lesson waiting for all the boys
to put on shirts. David helped Mikey say a pray at the end of our
lesson and told him to say something about thanking Jesus for being
selfless. Mikey couldn't hear and asked, "What?" With which David gave
him a two minute explanation about how Jesus was selfless and
everything he did was for us. He got exhausted and said, "ok never
mind, just end the prayer, I'll explain it later." Super cool to see
the boys teaching each other, even if it stalls the prayer.
Ward Council Presentation
President Juchau from the mission presidency came to ward council and
taught them the flowchart from the Apostles. It felt like things got
across and everything was sweet until they went around the room to
give their updates and then argued about the same things they've been
doing forever. *facepalm*. But that was just some of the leaders, we
have some key people that were going to focus on until the others can
catch the vision and get on board. The new focus is this: don't work
on lists of 100s of people. Instead take that list and pray to know
one to three people who would be ready to come back/get baptized and
then focus on them until it works because if God said it, then it'll
work. Repeat process.
Elder Plourde and I are going to focus on the Bishop and elders Quorum
president who himself was found by the old Elders Quorum President by
the same pattern a decade ago.
Maria Rosales
When I first got here the missionaries were teaching a lady who lives
in Oasis West (surprise surprise) but then stopped keeping
appointments. Just lately we picked her back up and had one of the
best lessons of my mission. The Spanish was on point and it was just
like having a normal lesson. Didn't feel forced o nothin. At the end I
felt impressed to ask her how she felt about our church. Tears came to
her eyes as she unloaded everything that's been weighing her down.
Seeing how Carmen has changed since joining the church has made her
want to change too. Elder Plourde didn't need any hint to ask her to
be baptized and now she's on date for the 13 of March.
Enjoying this 80 weather right now. Pretty soon it'll be back in the
100s. On Sunday, Elder Plourde called a kid named Jose, Olé which made
everyone around laugh pretty hard. The ward has really taken Elder
Plourde to heart and helping him learn Spanish. I have a great
companion y'all.
Love,
Elder Bryan
No comments:
Post a Comment