Hola amigos y familiares!
Dad´s
off to his Angel Meeting again? Those were some of my favorite
memories, going to a few of those meetings together. I´m so happy
Jonathan is working hard with basketball and it´s paying off. I hope he
ends up joining this special travel team. Sounds like dad is doing an
awesome job helping with Journey for Joseph! How is Jonathan liking it?
This
week has been somewhat of a difficult one health wise. I came down with
some sort of cold towards the beginning of the week and it still hasn´t
gone away. It just happened to be the week the Assistants went on
divisions with the zone leaders as well. During district meeting I was
struggling to talk and coughing a lot, but Heavenly Father blessed me. A
little cold never stopped me! I’ll be fine mom.
We´ve
been trying to track down references and names in the area book.
President Smith has received an inspired idea to double and triple
results. It requires asking for references from members, less-actives,
and recent convert families. We are to ask them which families they know
that don´t know God, and then to write down their names. Each family
member takes a copy of the collective list of names in hand, then we
pray, together and individually, inviting the Spirit. Once done, we
circle which names we feel are ready to hear the gospel now and compare
the lists. It has happened a couple times where everyone has one or two
similar names that are circled. The spirit is so strong when that
happens. And so that´s where we start. We then make plans and set up
activities to fellowship the future investigator families.
It´s
been helping us branch out as well. My comp. and I have found names not
in central Santa Cruz. We are beginning to find people prepared on the
outskirts of the city and beyond, another indicator to me that the work
is expanding.
My
companion and I have met with a lot of less active members and recent
converts this week, collecting the lost sheep. We’ve seen so many
miracles. For example, we found Oscar Chavez as a less active member on a
list. We asked around and found out he worked in the market selling
corte. We went and checked it out. When we stopped by his wife was the
only one working at the time. We got their phone number and address and
she said we could stop by later that week. No one was home on Tuesday,
but being persistent we stopped back again the next day. They were there
and invited us in! We got to know the whole family! They are so neat.
Oscar and his wife have 4 kids, two of whom were baptized just last
year. We got to meet Oscar´s mom who is also living with him. We planned
a family home evening before leaving and promised to help Oscar´s mom
dehusk corn later that week. We ended up doing all of that and invited
them to church. They didn´t come but my comp. and I are determined to
keep working with this family.
I´m
so grateful for this gospel and for all the blessings it has brought in
my life as well as the lives of those my comp. and I are teaching. The
work moves forward! The gospel is true.
