Monday 23 Jan 2012

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