Monday, July 27, 2009

I think it is just awesome that the ward is getting a second set of elders because they are doing so much teaching, way to go Beacon Hill ward. All we do down here is spend our time finding people and in fact there was actually a talk in conference about how many missionaries spend much of their time finding people rather than teaching them. It's interesting how your perspective changes when you're a missionary. I wish I had shared more.

The language is going good for being out a little over 4 months and although I can understand quite a bit and can talk alright it's a bit of a pain sometimes because I can't understand much of anything they say when they aren't talking about gospel stuff.

Sorry, but no pictures this week as this computer totally locks me out and won't read the card so hopefully next week.

What a week! We found so many good people or golden investigators but none of them were able to come to church because of prior commitments but they are so great! There is this one older couple in particular. We were crossing through an area that we hadn't been in for a while and I remembered that we had agrigated this one lady (an aggrigation is where we teach a compact lesson one and commit them to something and almost always Elder Kenney and I give them a Book of Mormon and get them to read and pray about it). She didn't seem very promising and she didn't seem that interested but she said that she would read it and pray about it. In fact if I remember correctly the only reason I remembered her was because she was the first lady where I did most of the aggrigation. So we stoped by and her husband answers and said to his wife, more or less, the two boys that walk around all day talking about religion are here, and as he is letting us in we hear in the background the wife or the one we aggrigated say (loudly might I add) "Mormones." So we talked to them both and they are as golden as you can get! The lady reads the Book of Mormon every night and the husband described it as she reads it whenever she can. He is almost blind but is getting new glasses soon so he will be able to read it and is really excited to. Also it turns out that he visits a former Branch President in the area every so often because he now lives alone. Incredibly, they would have liked to go to church, but couldn't because they had a prior commitment (we talked to them Saturday night) but they said they can't wait to go to church. As we taught them they were soaking it all up! It was an amazing lesson!

We had a lot of other good people this week that we talked to but none of them were able to make it to church which was the first time we've been able to go to church in a month because of the pig flu or wait it's the swine flu isn't it? I can't remember they call it "la gripe por cina" or "gripe-A." Now that we have church though we can really start getting people to progress. It's really hard to get someone to want to be baptized when they've never been to church.

Well I know this work is guided by the Lord, now more than ever, because of the narrow ways in which we ran into all of these people this week. Now we just have to see them through the next few steps!

Thanks for you love and support!

Elder Sands