This week has been great. So many things have happened this week. Another set of changes have come and gone. It is truly weird to think that I am on the last days of this time here.
So as I said last week I was heading out of the office for a short little trip. I ended up going to a the area of La Union in Mazate las Flores. I was only there for two days but...wow I love that area. That area is something special, something so completely different from the area that I am in right now. Mazate, in general has always been known as a blessed area of the mission. For two days I became companions with Elder Shupe. He is an excellent missionary and I am glad that I was able to serve with him even if only for two days. I went through my limited time with him at a very busy, fast pace. This week is conference, but beyond that there will be easily 6-8 baptisms from him and his new companion this month. I got to get to know a great deal of the investigators that they have there. One is a little lady named Vanessa, she is about 16 years old. She was found when the missionaries had been accidentally referred to a small little out of the way alley where some reference supposedly lived. Here they didn't find who they were looking for but rather found Vanessa, who had prepared for them. Things started off a little rocky as all first encounters do. She listened to the missionaries and accepted them back, even accepted a baptismal date, but then there was a time when she just simply could not be found. The elders began to loose a little bit of hope and understandably so. They would try and call her, try to see when they could come over, but every time something came up, or she would say a time and then not show up. A few weeks later, out of the blue, a thought came to them that today we need to go and see what was going on with Vanessa. Sure enough, she was home, and the Elders began to talk to her trying to figure out what had happened. It turns out that at times life becomes busy for all of us and at this time things were just going on with her. The Elders began to prod a little to see If she still wanted to be baptized, a few weeks earlier she had been unsure of her answer, but this day she said with an a surety, " I want to be baptised". She began to tell them a little bit of how she had been reading the Book of Mormon, and how at the moment she is finishing 2nd Nefi. At about this point of the story I come in at a moment so perfect, we had stopped by her house to see how she was going and to see if she would be going to General Conference with us. There we learned that not only would she be going but that she had invited a few of her friends. I was already impressed with this but then she said that she had not only invited them but that she had been teaching two of them from the pamphlets that the elders had given her. She had made photocopies of pamphlets to give to other people. On the spot I grabbed all of the teaching materials that I had on me and gave them to her, telling her that her days of photocopies are over.
Another Great couple of investigators I got to know were Brenda and Samuel. Well more than anything Brenda and her son. Her husband Samuel couldn't join us because he was working fixing cars in the "garage"(open field). You see the Elders had done something rather original. They decided to contact everyone that has a mango tree asking them for well....mangos. I absolutely love mangos and if any of my areas had ever had mangos I would probably be doing the same right now rather than be here sitting here writing this to you. Anyways they had gone around this day asking for mangos when lo and behold they found a nice lady walking around doing nothing less than giving her mangos aways. Needless to say, God put them in her path and her in theirs. After eating some mangos for a while and talking, she invited them back to her home where they began to teach her and her family who are also extremely pilas reading the Book of Mormon and loving the general feeling that the gospel brings into their home.
Honestly, Mazate is one of the most blessed lands in all of the mission and I will miss being there. Now being back in the office is nice but honestly the blessing of the mission is being able to effect a change in the life of the people we are teaching. Here in the home area, we had a little bit of success for conference. A little family came to conference and really liked it. Also, it was kinda fun to look for you guys during conference, it gave me a little something extra to do but I don't think I really meet any success as I didn't see you, you must have all had the nosebleed seats. Well I'm all out of conferences....and now that I think about it I'm out of all major holidays I think the only thing left is mothers day.
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| What does this 5 gallon bottle of water and Elder Wilcox have in common? |
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| Streaming Conference... |
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