Week 27: Grateful to be a missionary

My wonderful, amazing family!

Wow. So much happens in just one week. And the majority of those things are lessons. Lessons with investigators, lessons with less active members, lessons from mistakes, trying to share lessons in the street with random strangers. This life is a lesson, a test, and we are students learning tons from our experiences, trials, and other people. I am thankful for lessons. haha, random thought,  but just wanted to put that out there...

We´re excited because this saturday is Humberto´s baptism as well as our missionary activity, the open house. We have a lot to do this week, including passing out all the invitations for the activity and committing our investigators to all come. we really want this activity to be a success, for our investigators, but almost more importantly, for the members of the ward who are putting a lot of effort into planning it. Humberto has finally gone days without coffee, but it´s a bit frustrating with him, because he never answers his phone and we want to follow up on how he´s doing and remind him to not give in to coffee, but he doesn't ever answer the phone, even when we know that he has returned from working. But hay vamos.

 Heison, when we asked him about his feelings towards his baptism date (that was for 29 of this month), he said that if he were to choose his own baptism date, he´d choose September 20 of next year......so that was harsh....we put another date with him, for 20th of December, but we know that we have to really help him understand that there is no time to procrastinate the day of his repentance and his showing commitment to the Lord. We taught him the Law of Chastity the other day....very difficult because he had a really hard time being serious, and was very uncomfortable talking about such a topic. He has a past life with lots of women and we knew it would be hard to teach him. He knows that it´s the right thing and that it´s a commandment of God. Now he just has to commit to live it. We also taught him about repentance and the Atonement that makes it possible to repent and to change.

WE found Catia this week, and we visited her three times. We found her outside of her house one evening and we introduced ourselves and asked her if she knew anyone that needed a message about Jesus Christ or how to strengthen our families, and she said that she would really like it if we could come and help her son, who is 16 years old. She wants to help her son make good choices and be a good person and she also wants to become a better person in the process. she came to church with us (we brought her in taxi....a huge sacrifice because now we have no money for food this week, etc. haha) and it was the primary presentation in sacrament meeting, which I think she really enjoyed. But she could only stay for the first hour, and then had to leave to make lunch for her son. Her son, Ignacio, is also investigating, but didn't want to come this Sunday with us to church....but his mom says that she wants to set the example for him, and with time, he will come too.

Well, my companion and I have learned a lot this week. For one, we need to be examples always and be careful about the things we do and say. For example, we were trying to teach Heison the law of chastity, all of his nieces were there present, even though we went outside the house to be able to teach him without little ears listening....and we went about trying to get them to leave in the wrong way...we gave them a dvd of the restoration and told them to go in the house to watch it and that we would quiz them after wards....but we should have just told them straight up that we didn't want them to be present in the lesson because we
needed to talk to Heison about a theme for grown ups...Katerine (sister in law to Heison and less active member) was very upset with us when she heard how we told her daughters to leave...and we had to ask for forgiveness and swallow every bit of ounce of pride or rationalizations that we had and ask for forgiveness and tell her how wrong we were. Thankfully, she forgave us (only after a good old lecture of how we should have handled the situation).....fun stuff. haha.and the next day we brought bread, bananas, and peanut butter to eat peanut butter/banana sandwiches with them. All is well. haha. It was their first time eating PBbanana sandwiches, but they liked them ;) Some of the pictures are of Katerine, and her three daughters
when we walked them home from the church house this sunday. The two who are wearing our nametags are twins :) Sharon and Jimena: they are 9 years old.

Nobody here celebrates Thanksgiving, only the states do so...so count your blessings that yall are going to feast on the best food there is to offer, haha. I am so thankful to be serving the Lord for a year and a half, giving him my all. I am thankful for such a supportive family, who know what things are the most important in this life. Thanks so much for everything yall teach me. I love you all so much. Remember to always to the little things each day and each week that will help your testimonies grow and to become more like Christ.

Con mucho amor,
Hermana Flake