Dear Family, 23 Jan 2012
Good news, I’m allowed to write you for 30 minutes now instead of 20.
Yay! I know it’s just 10 minutes more but it makes all the difference!
Thanks for all of your prayers for our investigators. I’m pretty
sure the Godoy family is going to baptized this Saturday. We have
seen so many miracles while teaching them. When I first met them,
Hermana Nava and I couldn’t teach Ingris (one of the daughters who is
14) because she is really shy and doesn’t like listening to the
missionaries. So the whole family is baptized except her, her younger
sister Lixi and their Dad, Mario. The past few months Mario and Lixi
have been really receptive but have had a really hard time letting go
of coffee. And Ingris hasn’t been with us at all in the lessons. A
couple of weeks ago Mario expressed his desire to see Ingris be
baptized too so we made an extra effort to get her to join us in one
of our lessons. It was kind of tricky and we had to be really careful
to not scare her away or make her feel uncomfortable but with a
balance of persistence and sensitivity we were able to gain her trust
and she’s been joining in the lessons this past week. Not only that,
but we invited her to be baptized a few days ago and she accepted!
The biggest challenge we saw was the coffee because we knew she was
the last one in the house still drinking it but we found out that
Saturday, her and Lixi said goodbye to their last cup and got rid of
all the coffee in the house. Now it’s not a temptation for anyone in
the house and they are all really excited for their baptisms! Keep
praying for them!
Denia unfortunately said she is going to move to the Laguna which is
like 30 or 40 minutes away and I’m not sure what we are going to do.
Maybe it’s not her time right now but there’s always hope that things
can change. Keep her in your prayers too.
We have been teaching a young couple named Carlos and Merlin. They
have a one year old baby. (We celebrated his birthday yesterday)
Anyways, they are a really wonderful family and we’ve only taught them
a few times and Carlos has been really receptive but Merlin, not so
much. This week we taught the plan of salvation and Carlos was just
eating it up. When we taught about the spirit world and the 3 degrees
of glory he said, “Wow, that makes a lot of sense! Before I thought I
was for sure destined to go to hell but hearing this gives me a lot of
hope!” He wasn’t joking. Later we returned to visit them but only
Merlin was home. We talked to her to find out her doubts and help
resolve her questions and she was really open and honest with us. She
said, “Look, I’m going to be sincere with you, I don’t believe in what
you’re teaching but Carlos does and what you don’t know is that before
he met you two, he didn’t believe in God at all. I’m not sure what
the difference is now but as he’s been listening to your teachings
he’s changed and the main reason I’ve welcomed you into our home is
because its helping him to believe in God” I was super surprised to
hear that because it was something I never would have guessed. He
seemed to be really receptive from the beginning. He even came to
Church with us yesterday and really liked it. (For those of you
returned missionaries reading this understand that it’s a big deal if
an investigator makes it to church. It’s really hard to get people to
come) Anyways it’s amazing to see to power of the effect this message
has on people. People can feel that something is different about our
Church and Carlos can definitely see it. I just hope that Merlin can
soften her heart and realize it too!
Love you and pray for you all!
Hermana Jackson