Hows everybody doing?? I hope everything is good at home.We are excited here because we are going to go bowling with the gang and with President at like 12:30. Should be a fun time we are all pretty pumped!
We have had a lot of crazy stuff happen to us this last week. Some good and some bad but thats the mission sometimes. I will start with the bad. So Gabriela was all ready to be baptized and everything this past week. She passed her interview and was excited but when we passed by her house on saturday to bring her to the church, she came out and told us that she didn´t want to be baptized... she said that she was fine in her catholic church and that she didn´t want to change religions.. What?? we were so confused after all that had happened to her, and after the huge and obvious change that she had had in her life, she didnt want to follow through with her decision. We talked to her for a little bit and she was saying that her family wasnt going to support her at all because they are all catholics and she didnt want to be the other member of her family to join the church. We read scriptures, shared our testimonies, asked her a ton of inspired questions, and she wouldnt budge. We really dont know what happened. We have a hunch that it was just an excuse and that there is something else that is going on. Because when we were talking to her she was back to her normal self... like really sad and quiet and how she was before we had that experience with her. I really dont know but we felt like she might have gone back to what she was doing before. (she had mentioned that she had participated in witch craft and what not before we got there) but we really arent sure. But she doesnt want anything. I cant believe that after all of the testimonies that she saw and experienced that she denied everything...It hurts because we love her and saw her change so much but she is free to make her own choice. I hope she gets another chance further down the road.
So that happened and then this week we were teaching someone named Lilia who has a liver disease and doesnt have much time left. she went to church with us on sunday and loved it, it was the second time that she had been, and she said that she felt like her heart was going to jump out of her chest because she could feel the spirit so strong. So her baptism date we have moved a couple of times for her health and some problems that she has had but this weekend everything was all set up. She has received alot of answers from God but told us that she doesnt want to join the church yet. She says that she is scared and that she wants to be absolutely sure about the decision but she has had so many testimonies, and we explained that we can never be sure of anything, because god wants us to exercise our faith. But she told us that she was just too scared and that she doesnt want to. So it was kind of hard, because with her and Gabriela we have felt the spirit in the lessons and in the church and we know that they have felt it too, but the influence of the enemy was strong and there wasnt anything more that we could do to help them...
I feel good at least knowing we did all that we could do. One time dad wrote me a letter and he said that even if we do everything that we can sometimes the investigators will still decline the invitacion to join the church, but its something thats between them and Heavenly Father, and some of them just aren´t quiet ready yet. But the seeds are planted and I pray that they will have another oportunity further down the road.
But we have also been able to find some great knew people this week. We are teaching a great family, a young lady named Eli who is a friend of a convert in Magisterio, and her mom and her sister are also listening to us. Eli and her mom went to church this past sunday. We Eli wants to be baptized and we are going to schedule her baptism for this upcoming saturday or sunday. Her mom asked if the Book of mormon was true and says that she had a dream where she saw Jesus and he told her to follow in this path... not bad for an answer huh? So we are going to continue teaching them so they can act on their answer.
this week was fun becuase we did divisions on Tuesday, thursday, and friday so we felt like we could help out some of the misionaries and we were also able to learn from them.
the pictures that i sent are of us four with pink ties on, haha and the other is a picture of elder Perez from Guatelmala, he was with Elder ortiz and I for two weeks in Magisterio and he stopped by the offices this week for some stuff and we got to see him, it was fun.
We are preparing for a conference that we are going to have with all of the zone leaders, district leaders, and trainers, like 70 misionaries in total. We are going to have it on wednesday and we will share lots of messages and techniques to help the misioneraries have more sucess and be better leaders. It should be fun, I will let you guys know how it went next saturday!
I love you guys a ton! Behave yourselfs and stay out of trouble, haha!
Mucho amor,
Elder Eastmond
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