Letter 16: "Miracle miracles miracles!"

Sonsonate, El Salvador
April 25, 201


ERIC GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is my news for the week. I can´t convey the happiness and excitement i feel! it happened yesterday. the adversary definately didn´t want it to happen and tried his hardest to make it not happen. but alas it did. not only that but we got another baptisimal date for an investigador named William.

He is pretty hard core and when he gets a testimony of the Book of Mormon and all that jazz he is going to be a great tool for the Lord. he´s forty years old, so a full time mision isn´t in the near future, but he is going to be a great missionary in sensunapan! our baptisimal goal for april is 7 people.

We have two baptisms as of today and three baptisimal dates. its going to take a few more miracles to reach our goals, but we are hopeful! your prayers and love is much appreciated! they help! the Lord is awake, remember that. stay strong and pray hard. life is good!

i love you, God loves you. what else matters?

Letter 15: "Roses and sunshine"

Sonsonate, El Salvador
April 20, 2011

"Like yesterday"
So i know this probably comes as a shock to you all, but not every day in the mission is roses and sunshine (well here the sun is literally always shining). we have Horrible-rotten-no-good-very-bad days....like yesterday! :)

So we had 3 baptisms scheduled for this week...but all of them fell through.

1) Lisett-
Lisett has decided that she doesn´t have any desire to be baptized. she knows everything, she doesn´t have any problems with the commandments and she knows she needs to be baptized. but she has no desire...she feels like she has to read and pray more to have a firm testimony, we think she just doesn´t want to commit.

We know she knows its true, but she has yet to feel it. so in our last lesson we had her pray and then think and there was complete silence until she said the date that she´s going to be baptized...i felt like Ammon waiting to hear the response from King Lamoni! it wasn´t a full hour before she responded...more like ten minutes, but it was excruciating! anyway. the baptisimal date is for the 25th of April.

Thank you for your prayers on that front, we are going to need them for a bit longer though!

2) Yeldy-
Yeldy is the exact opposite of Lisett...she is like a little girl...very innocent! she has all the desire in the world to be baptized but doesn´t understand anything we teach. for example.

Yesterday. before a person gets baptized they need to attend sacrament meeting for at least two sundays. she came last sunday and loved it and has come to every activity that we invite her to.

This sunday she was going to go to church in the morning and be baptized at 2...we called her in the morning to wake her up and had a member of the relief society go to pick her up...but somehow she didn´t get to church...we went searching for her after church and she was chillin' in her house...we asked what happened and she said..no i didn´t come this morning, but at 2 oclock i´ll be there!...she had no idea...

Its hard to explain but you get the point. she doesn´t get it...but her desire is there and we are going to work for next week

3) Eric-
Eric is chosen by God to be baptized and although we didn´t get our miracle of his baptism yesterday i know that this week there is going to be a bigger miracle for him! and he´s going to be baptized this week!

Just know this
i have run out of time and can´t explain all about our Horrible-rotten-no-good-very-bad day... just know I know that this Gospel is true! the Lord lives and he is going to come...we just need to prepare ourselves...the small decisions we make every day determine our preparedness...are you prepared?

I love you, God Loves you. what else really matters?

Letter 14: "Being a missionary during General Conference!"

Sonsonate, El Salvador
April 14, 2011

"A few things!"
I don´t have much patience to write much today... just wanted to say a few things about General Conference!

Elder Cook
Possibly one of my new favorite apostles...if you are a woman and didn´t hear it saturday morning you need to find his talk and read it right now...all men need to read it too! its pretty amazing!!!!

Also the last session...i forget his name but he was one of the seventy that spoke before Elder Holland...the talk about 'to do' and 'to be' whew! I learned a lot from that talk!

"Awesome Things about..."
There are a lot of pretty awesome things about being a missionary during general conference...

  • One: I didn´t fall asleep during the Sunday morning session of Conference because i went to bed the night before.
  • Two: It felt pretty good to be off the hook (at least for now) when they talk about how you need to be married or at least dating...whew!

I learned more from this general conference that any other general conference i have ever listened to. i did get to listen to it in English. We had a gringo party in a small room by the bishops office. it felt weird cause i was the only sister in there. but it was fun.

"Baptism"
we had the baptism of Yeldy inbetween sessions of conference on Sunday.

it was crazy because we started the program and when it came time for her to be baptized, Elder Winters (our District Leader) had lost the key to the baptisimal font!!!!! so Kerin (the guy performing the baptism) jumped over the glass banister thing, into the font to open the door...that was definately a baptism she will never forget!

The work is moving we have a TON of positive investigadors and we are going to have to work really hard to help them progress!

We've been focusing a lot on the things they have to do and not enough on the way they have to be. so my goal is to not just get them baptized, but to help them become converted to the path...

Anyway.

I'm alive and life is good! time is flying!