Friday, January 14, 2011

Hard Work = Tons of Blessings

Hey Again!!  Sorry I didn’t get to email yesterday.  The Library was closed because of the snow storm we got.  Once again, we were grounded because of the snow.  At first I liked the snow, but now it's just getting annoying, having to cancel appointments and stuff because we can’t drive, and some parts of our area are too far to walk too.
Anyways, my new Companion, Elder Lopez is totally sweet.  We get along just fine.  He's from Arizona, and likes the same kind of Music I do (metal).  Before his mission he was the lead guitar player and backup vocals for a metal band (and from the sounds of it they were pretty good).  He's toured the west coast twice, opening for "All That Remains" and "August Burns Red", both of which are pretty big bands.  But now he is on a mission, and is an amazing missionary.  Since Elder Maldonado left, the work has gotten much better.  Unfortunately Maldo had a hard time getting himself to do the work, because he thought a little too much of home.  But he tried.  Anyways, I and Elder Lopez have 5 new possible investigators.  We’re hoping that we can get at least 4 at church next Sunday.  The amazing part is that three of them we found last night.  We had a dinner with a recent convert family, and they invited some of the people that rent their basement for dinner as well.  Those friends of theirs all seemed very interested in our church, and they were very involved in the lesson we taught, and listened attentively.  Their names are, Fernando, Luis, and Jorge.  We'll be meeting with them on Saturday, and potentially extending a Baptismal invitation.  I'm very excited for that, and definitely preparing for that.  But yeah, me and Elder Lopez have been working very hard together, and have been receiving tons of blessings. 
This same family that gave us these other investigators also has a friend that is interested.  She has come to church a number of times.  We're going to be meeting with her again soon.  She seems pretty interested too, but we haven’t really taught her yet.  Her name is Solidad.  We're going to be meeting with her tomorrow.
Funny story about that Lady who came up to us at Wal-Mart.  On Saturday we had an appointment set, but she wasn’t able to make it, so we re-scheduled for Sunday night.  At the same time we were asking her if another man would be there, and if so would he be listening too? 
Her answer is what kinda threw us off.  She said, "Oh, we've already tried with him."
That kinda took us off guard.  It turns out that she is actually an inactive member, who just moved into the area.  When she was 17, she was baptized in Ecuador, and then after coming here, she went inactive.  That was about 15 yrs ago.  Since then, she's been married, and now has a young 2 yr old boy.  Anyways, she wants to become active in the church again, so when she saw us, she saw it as an opportunity to start doing that again. 
We found out the reason her husband doesn't want to listen to us is because he is a Jehovah's Witness, and really believes in that religion.  But…we're still going to try and work on him.
So yeah, the work in this area has been going much better since Elder Lopez became my companion. 
I'll include more next week, but we've got to get going to our other appointment.
Les Quiero Mucho, Elder Dilling