Week 82 Never a Dull Moment at Church

Hey, 

The work continues on and we were able to start the week with a good language class and some good lessons! We'll see what happens in the future but Dorothy, Jim, and Janet are all on the right path. We decided to drop Orvin becuase they lie to us when we knock the door and every time we call they're "busy" or having visitas. It was hard to do it because I felt like they had so much potential when we first found them but it's a part of missionary life. Sometimes people aren't ready and you have to move on to others. The field is white already to harvest, am I right? 

This transfer I've been trying to focus more on following the Spirit in teaching. There have been times on my mission where I felt like I was just giving information instead of teaching to the needs and concerns of our investigators and it's never good to just spew out information! We had an awesome lesson with Wilbur where I felt like we really just talked about his concerns and what holds him back from taking the next step. The circumstances were perfect and I felt like we got through to him. It was cool to see the Lord put us in the right place with him! We went to go try Manuel and no one was home... Right as we got in the car to go somewhere else Manuel shows up with Wilbur in the car. It really allowed Wilbur to be open with us in a way he can't be at home sometimes. God is so good to us and I'm always grateful when I open my eyes and see it. 

We had zone conference this week and those are always a highlight for me. We got to see the new Easter initiative video and I'm pumped for it! Should be good. President encouraged us to work more with the youth of the church and I thought it was inspired. The people in their mid teens to 20's are making big changes in their lives and are generally more receptive to the gospel. That's something we're going to be better at!

We taught Jorge round 2 and he's doing pretty well! He's reading a lot and asking really good questions. He has a desire to learn and understand which is really impressive. He's pretty open to the Joseph Smith story and believes it's true! We invited him to be baptized and it's definitely going to be a goal we work towards. I was overall pretty happy with the lesson! 

Saturday brought us some good lessons with Kayla and Erica and they're both pretty sincere in their desire to do what's right! I've been pretty happy with their progress! Later that night we called Wilbur to remind him about church and he told us his daughter had been in the hospital all weekend with a high fever but that she would be home a little later. We took it as an opportunity to offer a blessing and they agreed. I'd never given a blessing in Spanish before so we studied up on the way and gave a blessing to this little girl. She cried for the annointing but was quiet for most of the blessing which was great. I sealed the annointing and it's amazing to feel the peace that comes as you give a blessing. The words always come no matter what language it is and the spirit of God is manifest. It was a cool experience! 

Sunday was wild. First things first Jorge came to church which was awesome!! I was honestly pretty surprised that he showed up but he stayed the whole time and seemed to enjoy it! Once the meetings started it was just busy! No such thing as resting in the group. We had a high councilor come that didn't speak Spanish so Myron asked me to translate for the group. I don't know how many of you have done live translation but it's not the easiest thing in the world. Especially when the guy is talking about how proud he is of his newborn twins even when all they do is eat and poop and how Heavenly Father must feel the same love for us as his children. 😂 It was interesting. To add to some of the excitement Ramón came up to us before sacrament and asked if we could help him with his lesson for Elders Quorum. We were going to be combined with the English ward so I thought he just wanted us to help him get some of his points across. Clearly something was lost in translation... We get to Elders Quorum and Ramón tells the combined Elders Quorum in broken English that the Elders are teaching the class today and then he just sits down... What? 😮 Hah so we go to the front of the class and proceed to make up a 40 minute lesson from the Teachings of the Presidents. Luckily everyone participated but we definitely got blindsided on that one. You never know what can happen in good ol P7! 

We went and saw Iris after church as a group which was super cool. She is in a Psych ward recovering from some of her mania and is progressing along slowly. They don't mess around at those places! We had to take our ties off and everything to go in and they were pretty suspicious about our name tags. Nothing that could be potentially dangerous goes into that place! It was sad to see a lot of the people there and the false reality that they're in. One lady was convinced she didn't live there... Kinda sad but Iris seemed pretty happy to see us and to take the sacrament! 

Well another week has come and gone. We've made some progress with a lot of investigators and the biggest thing we can do moving forward is just get some firm goals and baptismal dates with them. I'm excited to see what happens! 

Stay out of trouble. 

Los Tres Nefitas, 

Elder Halls
Pictures: All my comps that are still serving in one picture; Post service. We helped the Bellistons with their church this week; Last P Day balling, Today's PDay activity