Crazy weather on the East Coast! Glad you made it home mom. Way to go Jonathan for working hard and playing your best. Hope dad, grandma, and grandpa enjoy the Angle meeting in Florida.
My new companion is Elder Rojas. He is from Panama, my first companion from there. He has 3 siblings: younger twins and a little brother. He loves to eat. He talks really, really fast, which I like because it helps me with my Spanish to speak faster and clearer. He has lots of desires to work and we`ve already seen many of the Lord`s blessings as we`ve worked diligently and lived worthily.
Speaking of blessings, we found a great family who was willing to listen to us! Answer to our prayers. We had received a reference from a guy in the Brasilia ward, Estuardo. He came with us to contact the reference. It`s the Claudio Castillo family. We were able to talk to a lot of them, and the 3 adults that were listening all accepted to be baptized! It was incredible! Estuardo is an awesome teacher. It was incredible to see him bearing testimony of the restoration of the gospel knowing that soon he too will be a missionary.
Then Yamilet is a young girl who has attended church for the past 3 years. The missionaries have been teaching her and her mom during all that time. Yesterday at church, she told sister Alma, the president of the young women, that she wanted to be baptized! She even picked her own baptismal date. It was incredible to see that after so long, the spirit was finally able to touch her in a way that she wanted to make the commitment to be baptized. Really cool.
Elder Rojas was here in Huehue in the same zone a little less than a year ago. The first day together, he was showing me a lot of investigators that he remembered teaching. A few of them were positive. For example, he had taught a family in his old area, but turns out that the daughter of that family started working in a mechanic shop here in Centro. She said she would start reading the Book of Mormon again and that we could pass by again later tonight. Awesome.
Then there was a Worldwide Broadcast for all the missionaries in the whole world. It was amazing. Part of that broadcast was a pre-recorded face to face discussion with Elder Bednar and about 20 missionaries. The topic was about the Spirit. Elder Bednar described how we can`t force the Spirit into the hearts of those we teach. If that were so, every person who talked to Pte. Monson would fall to their knees and beg to be baptized. But as we know, that doesn`t happen. If we live worthy, obedient lives, we will have the Spirit with us, and that allows the Spirit to reach closer to the hearts of the investigators we are teaching. Everything we do should be focused so that the Spirit`s influence can flow into the hearts of our investigators. Faith is a principle of action, and as we act there comes a power. We should do all that we can to help us and our investigators act to be able to invite the Spirit in all our lives.
I know that this is the Lord`s work. I know that as we live worthily, the Lord`s promise is fulfilled and we are guided by the Spirit. May we all live worthy to allow the Spirit to guide us and to help those around us feel the truthfulness of the gospel.
Hope y`all have a great week! Nos wachamos
Elder Hicken
No comments:
Post a Comment