Hello Family,
Anyway, this past week has been an amazing week because Luis is the man. He is super cool and I love to go over and teach him just because we are super tight and we get along really well. It is amazing how much he loves every little aspect about the gospel. For example, we were heading over to a member's house for dinner last week and he called to ask who the three nephites were, if we were them, or if it is actually real. He thought it was so cooled that they were still on the earth and he was really excited. On Saturday morning at about 11:00 AM he finished the Book of Mormon and at 2:00 PM he was baptized. It was the coolest day. I had previously bought a triple combination and an extra LDS bible and we wrote our testimonies in them and gave them to him on the day of his baptism and he was super excited.
So anyway, Luis' baptism was one of the most amazing baptisms that I have ever seen. There were more people than I have ever seen at a baptism. The room was overflowing and we had to have the doors open. Luis said that he would not choose between he should perform the baptism because he felt bad and I know that Elder Esplin really wanted to do it and so I told him to do it since he doesn't have very good spanish and I would perform the confirmation in church. It worked out very well and I actually ended up perform the baptism for one of the sisters investigators named Josue Garza at the same service. The spirit was very strong in the service and in the dressing room Luis was in tears and was very thankful. They both shared their testimonies after. It was very touching and Luis knows without doubt that this gospel is true.
One of the coolest things about it is that Luis' mom came and we had taught her the first lesson the day before so she came looking for an answer to know if the gospel was true. She is very smart and intellectual but a little lacking in faith however I know that she will get her answer soon. We all feel it. Now she says that she has seen miracles in Luis' life and he has changed a ton, and she likes the church and believes it is good for him but she doesn't know it for herself. However, she is reading the Book of Mormon, one chapter per day, and I know that she will get the answer that it is true. Luis is already planning on doing her baptism and we have a tentative baptismal date for her, provided that she gets the answer, scheduled for the 7th of August. Her and I are very close because Luis mostly speaks English and so does Elder Esplin but she and I always speak in spanish and we always are talking together. I love her to death and I am so looking forward to the day in the future that she gets baptized. I hope it is soon because Luis will be leaving on a mission in one year but if not now I know at least during that time God will do some kind of miracle so that she accepts the gospel.
Guess what, Luis wants to come out as a missionary with us now but he doesn't have a car or a bike. Well anyway, he found a kids bike with training wheels way back in his garage and he is going to take them off and ride it with us to our appointments. He is a really small skinny kid so it might work out but it will still look a little ridiculous.
Oh they are doing a whole lot of worldwide missionary work changes. They are going to be changing the MTC cirriculum and with that they are changing a whole lot of policies. Tracy, it is not just you that will be having zone conferences only once every two transfers, it is worldwide and same with the new teaching programs.
I love my mission. It is fun and good. I testify that that is true.
Meanwhile, Luis is going crazy with the missionary zeal. He is sharing the gospel with everyone and we have two lessons today that he set up for his friends. He talks to everyone on the street and everybody he knows about the gospel. I think that he is beating us at our own game but that is alright, anything to get the gospel out. He is finding so much joy in spreading the gospel. He called us up on the phone last night and left a message that was him screaming "Call me back,Call me back,Call me back,Call me back,Call me back,Call me back,Call me back, hey this Luis!" We called him thinking that maybe his mom had died or something. Nope, he was just excited to tell us about all the people with which he was sharing the gospel. He was saying, " the people don't get it, they are all good with Christ and all, but they don't realize that they don't have the full truth!" Needless to say, Amazing! He received the Aaronic priesthood yesterday and he is super excited. Their is another sister in the ward name Amelia Contreras that we baptized at the beginning of this last transfer, She is in her fifties and she has a very strong testimony and is always sharing the gospel too. Her testimony at the day of her baptism is one of the things that helped Luis convert. She loves just Christ but struggles to understand the doctrines of the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. She is Luis' hero and so he decided that he is going to go over to her house everyday to study the Book of Mormon with her and to help her continue reading and understanding. He said "I will teach her the Book of Mormon, and she can teach me how to be a good person!" He cannot wait to home teach, he says that it will be his opportunity to be a missionary specifically assigned to certain families and he said that he can't wait. He is incredible. One year and he will be able to serve his own mission. Every time I am at his house I leave praying constantly in my mind thanking God for this tender mercy to have found Luis. He was so prepared. I know that he will be a leader in God's Kingdom and I am just so thankful that God gave me the opportunity to be a part of his conversion. This experience alone has made my mission. It has changed my life dramatically. Luis and I will be friends eternally and I know that he will be the means of bringing thousands of souls unto Jesus Christ. I know also that in time his whole family will convert. They will follow his example and find the truth. Just this sunday his step brother came to church for the first time and his mom came for the second time.
Oh yeah, and other news... At Luis' house yesterday we had sopa de mariscos, seafood soup. Mom will be so proud of me, I ate it all and I even liked it relatively well. My least favorite foods, soup and seafood. In it contained full shrimp, the kind where you have to rip of the heads and pull out the tails, crab, various other unidentifieable fish, and octopus. Octopus was actually really good except the outer skin. That stuff is like pure fat. Please be proud.
Our district is on fire. We are having baptisms every single week and we have at least one scheduled every week for the next 4. We have so many good potentials. I have never seen anything like this. Maybe it is to make up for the dryspell we had in baytown. Whatever it is, I feel like we are seeing miracles daily and I have so much desire to work. I love the gospel. I would do anything to find another person like Luis, or even better, a whole family. I know that we are finding more and God is granting us so much success and it is not because of our own merits. You can't merit success, God only gives success. That is something that I have learned because I worked very hard with Elder Jex but we did not have baptisms. They come as a gift from God. I am so thankful to him right now.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
New companion, Elder Esplin
Hey,
I think you all asked me how I am doing with Elder Esplin? We are doing pretty good. I got upset with him last week because he manipulated me into buying him a bike lock and a bike pump because he said we would have to have it for the area and also because he wouldn't share a drop of his food with me, or laundry soap or anything like that. It's not that I like to be a mooch or anything but when we do transfers here, we have to leave all our food and stuff behind so it is kind of expensive to transfer because you have to re buy a lot of things. Normally it is not a problem though because everbody helps each other out and if somebody needs something, we share and also usually we buy food together. Elder Esplin would not even share laundry soap, milk, bread, cheese or the basics with me. Because of that I had to spend way extra and I used all of my 130 bucks in the past two weeks so now I have no money for the next few weeks. No worries I will just keep draining my home bank account I guess. Yeah, it made me furious one day when I saw him sneakily snacking on my food. I about put a footprint on his face but now I decided that I am just going to start sharing with him like crazy until he realizes how stupid it is to be a selfish bumsniffer.
Its this whole thing about being companions that have never had a friend in their life. Elder Daniele and Esplin both had never hung out with anyone outside of their family in their life and it makes it so a person does not know how to deal with people in social situations. They need to have better filtering on missionaries that put in their papers. If you didn't hang out at all before and are socially struggling they should require that you go to a social skills class. That's what they need to be teaching in mission prep.
No, i need to stop complaining. Elder Esplin is a wonderful guy. He knows every fact a man would never want to know about star wars and computer games. He also loves the gospel and is amazing at spanish for only having two transfers in the mission.
But anyway, ignore the rest, I am really loving it here in Sterling Green, besides the fact that we live in a smokestack and heaven forbid we teach the word of wisdom with the scent of Marlboros flowing from our clothes. We have an amazing investigator named Amelia Contreras that is going to get baptized this week. She is 55 or so years old and is from Honduras. She is almost deaf and was born that way so we have to yell to teach her. She loves the gospel and is so excited to get baptized but she had a very bad incident at church yesterday. She was in relief society and first of all they announced her baptism and so everybody was looking at her and congratulating her and then the teacher started making some jokes (totally unrelated to her) before they started the lesson. Because she couldn't hear well and that had all been staring at her, Ameila thought they had been making fun of her because of her hearing and she begin to cry. We were in priesthood and so we knew nothing about it until the Relief Society president came and talked to us. We waited for her outside the bishops office as he tried to comfort her and she had a major emotional breakdown. She said all of her life since she was a little girl, people have made fun of her for being basically deaf and she had finally found a place where she felt accepted and loved and then she had been under the impression that she was even being rejected there in church and she was devastated. We thought she mind not go through with her baptism. The Bishop, and the Relief Society Presidency all took their turns trying to helping her understnad that they loved her and nobody would ever make fun of her but she was so upset she wouldn't be comforted. After, an hour of talking she finally understood and felt better and I think it will actually be a good thing for her because it got her to know the sisters in the ward and it got them to feel close. After that Amelia said that she was good and we proceeded to have her baptismal interview and now she is ready to go. This week we will just keep bringing over members and this saturday she will be baptized.
Yesterday evening we had a super miracle. We were about to return to our apartment for dinner but we felt we needed to accomplish more before we went back, so we went to this other street to contact people. The first person we found was this 17 year old kid named Luis Chavez that was throwing rocks at his friends window trying to see if he was home. We talked to him and he said he didn't know if he believed in Jesus Christ and he was really confused about religion. We asked him to come sit down with us and we would share him the message right then. He said sure why not. So we walked to a nearby park and sat down. We started teaching him the Restoration and as we talked he would not make eye contact and was very deep in thought, and then every so often he would ask a deep question. We focused on the atonement and the importance of Jesus Christ and the lesson kind of mixed into a Plan of Salvation. At one point we were talking about agency and he said, " ok I am thankful for all you do but you are not really helping me at all and I have heard enough and I understand that you guys believe all this stuff but I don't because I don't feel it like you do. So thank you for your time. I have my agency too and I would like to leave." He stood up to leave and I said," Wait, I know that you have your agency and we would never want to take that away from you we only invite. You haven't heard the most important part of our message yet. Will you give us ten more minutes?"
He said ok and then we shared the story of Joseph Smith and everything changed. He changed his entire attitude and by the end of the lesson we got a baptismal date set with him and he was super excited to read the Book of Mormon and ask God if it is true. He offered the final prayer and asked humbly for God to tell him if the stuff we were saying was true. That was one of this first times he had prayed in his life. Then he siad "Look I don't believe in coincedence. I will see you all tomorrow."
Anyway, he is a super miracle. Now we just have to pray that he stays on it. I believe he will. Pray for Him. I gotta go y'all but I love you. This Church is so true and our God is a god of miracles.
Love,
Elder Bednar
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use
I think you all asked me how I am doing with Elder Esplin? We are doing pretty good. I got upset with him last week because he manipulated me into buying him a bike lock and a bike pump because he said we would have to have it for the area and also because he wouldn't share a drop of his food with me, or laundry soap or anything like that. It's not that I like to be a mooch or anything but when we do transfers here, we have to leave all our food and stuff behind so it is kind of expensive to transfer because you have to re buy a lot of things. Normally it is not a problem though because everbody helps each other out and if somebody needs something, we share and also usually we buy food together. Elder Esplin would not even share laundry soap, milk, bread, cheese or the basics with me. Because of that I had to spend way extra and I used all of my 130 bucks in the past two weeks so now I have no money for the next few weeks. No worries I will just keep draining my home bank account I guess. Yeah, it made me furious one day when I saw him sneakily snacking on my food. I about put a footprint on his face but now I decided that I am just going to start sharing with him like crazy until he realizes how stupid it is to be a selfish bumsniffer.
Its this whole thing about being companions that have never had a friend in their life. Elder Daniele and Esplin both had never hung out with anyone outside of their family in their life and it makes it so a person does not know how to deal with people in social situations. They need to have better filtering on missionaries that put in their papers. If you didn't hang out at all before and are socially struggling they should require that you go to a social skills class. That's what they need to be teaching in mission prep.
No, i need to stop complaining. Elder Esplin is a wonderful guy. He knows every fact a man would never want to know about star wars and computer games. He also loves the gospel and is amazing at spanish for only having two transfers in the mission.
But anyway, ignore the rest, I am really loving it here in Sterling Green, besides the fact that we live in a smokestack and heaven forbid we teach the word of wisdom with the scent of Marlboros flowing from our clothes. We have an amazing investigator named Amelia Contreras that is going to get baptized this week. She is 55 or so years old and is from Honduras. She is almost deaf and was born that way so we have to yell to teach her. She loves the gospel and is so excited to get baptized but she had a very bad incident at church yesterday. She was in relief society and first of all they announced her baptism and so everybody was looking at her and congratulating her and then the teacher started making some jokes (totally unrelated to her) before they started the lesson. Because she couldn't hear well and that had all been staring at her, Ameila thought they had been making fun of her because of her hearing and she begin to cry. We were in priesthood and so we knew nothing about it until the Relief Society president came and talked to us. We waited for her outside the bishops office as he tried to comfort her and she had a major emotional breakdown. She said all of her life since she was a little girl, people have made fun of her for being basically deaf and she had finally found a place where she felt accepted and loved and then she had been under the impression that she was even being rejected there in church and she was devastated. We thought she mind not go through with her baptism. The Bishop, and the Relief Society Presidency all took their turns trying to helping her understnad that they loved her and nobody would ever make fun of her but she was so upset she wouldn't be comforted. After, an hour of talking she finally understood and felt better and I think it will actually be a good thing for her because it got her to know the sisters in the ward and it got them to feel close. After that Amelia said that she was good and we proceeded to have her baptismal interview and now she is ready to go. This week we will just keep bringing over members and this saturday she will be baptized.
Yesterday evening we had a super miracle. We were about to return to our apartment for dinner but we felt we needed to accomplish more before we went back, so we went to this other street to contact people. The first person we found was this 17 year old kid named Luis Chavez that was throwing rocks at his friends window trying to see if he was home. We talked to him and he said he didn't know if he believed in Jesus Christ and he was really confused about religion. We asked him to come sit down with us and we would share him the message right then. He said sure why not. So we walked to a nearby park and sat down. We started teaching him the Restoration and as we talked he would not make eye contact and was very deep in thought, and then every so often he would ask a deep question. We focused on the atonement and the importance of Jesus Christ and the lesson kind of mixed into a Plan of Salvation. At one point we were talking about agency and he said, " ok I am thankful for all you do but you are not really helping me at all and I have heard enough and I understand that you guys believe all this stuff but I don't because I don't feel it like you do. So thank you for your time. I have my agency too and I would like to leave." He stood up to leave and I said," Wait, I know that you have your agency and we would never want to take that away from you we only invite. You haven't heard the most important part of our message yet. Will you give us ten more minutes?"
He said ok and then we shared the story of Joseph Smith and everything changed. He changed his entire attitude and by the end of the lesson we got a baptismal date set with him and he was super excited to read the Book of Mormon and ask God if it is true. He offered the final prayer and asked humbly for God to tell him if the stuff we were saying was true. That was one of this first times he had prayed in his life. Then he siad "Look I don't believe in coincedence. I will see you all tomorrow."
Anyway, he is a super miracle. Now we just have to pray that he stays on it. I believe he will. Pray for Him. I gotta go y'all but I love you. This Church is so true and our God is a god of miracles.
Love,
Elder Bednar
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Lamentations of Texas
Hey Family,
Wow, I am almost at 9 months which I can’t believe! That is a very long time. (In fact, for those of you that don’t know that is the amount of time that it takes, from the moment of conception until birth, to form a baby.) That is a really long time. All my friends could have children now and I wouldn’t even know because I don’t really hear from them so who knows what is going on in their lives.
But anyway, with this 9 months thing, for the most part I think it is going too fast, however the last few days I kind of wished I was camping the mountains of Utah, blasting music from the Mars Volta, and wasting my life away in that wonderfully mind-numbing virtual reality of Command and Conquer. My fingers have been itching to play those songs I have all forgotten on guitar and I have felt pangs of longing to spend a relaxing day on the beautiful, soft, sandy, beaches of the Great Salt Lake, with its crystal clear water and shiny black brine shrimp… I wrote an addition to the book of lamentations the other day:
Oh Texas,
You have wrecked us,
You bring us no joy.
With your prophesied summer,
It’s rather a bummer,
To know that the temperature is rising.
Your women are fat,
And often Mexican,
But there is nothing wrong with that,
Even though there is no problem with the hispanicity,
There is still a problem with the fat,
Oh Texas, woe, woe be unto you,
Repent or be damned,
Are the words that I say that I know are true.
You always make me feel sweaty,
And one time, the English Elders covered my room with confetti,
And it always stinks in Pasadena
Rotting garbage
Decapitated possums with maggots.
Oh Texas, my love
Give me your Mexicans,
And I will baptize them unto repentance.
Well family, I know that the rhyme scheme is a little avant-garde. You might not be accustomed to such art but as you begin to study art as I have, and llegar a ser a connoisseur, you will understand the beauty and truth of my artistry.
We do have a twelve year kid named Anthony that is very excited about the gospel. He is living in the home of a semi-active member. His mom and family are not members but I think his example will bring them into the church. He is reading the Book of Mormon everyday and he understands it very well. Better than most the adults we teach. He has a baptismal date for the 15th of May and he is very excited for it and also he is very excited to be a part of the scouting program. I hope he goes through with it all and then he can be a missionary in 7 years.
I gotta go fam. I love you all. I love this mission. The past couple days have been hard but it is good. Pray for me because I need it a lot.
Love,
Bernsides
Wow, I am almost at 9 months which I can’t believe! That is a very long time. (In fact, for those of you that don’t know that is the amount of time that it takes, from the moment of conception until birth, to form a baby.) That is a really long time. All my friends could have children now and I wouldn’t even know because I don’t really hear from them so who knows what is going on in their lives.
But anyway, with this 9 months thing, for the most part I think it is going too fast, however the last few days I kind of wished I was camping the mountains of Utah, blasting music from the Mars Volta, and wasting my life away in that wonderfully mind-numbing virtual reality of Command and Conquer. My fingers have been itching to play those songs I have all forgotten on guitar and I have felt pangs of longing to spend a relaxing day on the beautiful, soft, sandy, beaches of the Great Salt Lake, with its crystal clear water and shiny black brine shrimp… I wrote an addition to the book of lamentations the other day:
Oh Texas,
You have wrecked us,
You bring us no joy.
With your prophesied summer,
It’s rather a bummer,
To know that the temperature is rising.
Your women are fat,
And often Mexican,
But there is nothing wrong with that,
Even though there is no problem with the hispanicity,
There is still a problem with the fat,
Oh Texas, woe, woe be unto you,
Repent or be damned,
Are the words that I say that I know are true.
You always make me feel sweaty,
And one time, the English Elders covered my room with confetti,
And it always stinks in Pasadena
Rotting garbage
Decapitated possums with maggots.
Oh Texas, my love
Give me your Mexicans,
And I will baptize them unto repentance.
Well family, I know that the rhyme scheme is a little avant-garde. You might not be accustomed to such art but as you begin to study art as I have, and llegar a ser a connoisseur, you will understand the beauty and truth of my artistry.
We do have a twelve year kid named Anthony that is very excited about the gospel. He is living in the home of a semi-active member. His mom and family are not members but I think his example will bring them into the church. He is reading the Book of Mormon everyday and he understands it very well. Better than most the adults we teach. He has a baptismal date for the 15th of May and he is very excited for it and also he is very excited to be a part of the scouting program. I hope he goes through with it all and then he can be a missionary in 7 years.
I gotta go fam. I love you all. I love this mission. The past couple days have been hard but it is good. Pray for me because I need it a lot.
Love,
Bernsides
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Investigators at conference got bored and left
Buenos Dias,
I am so glad that Tracy will be having a baptism this week. I think she forgot to send me the email that said she was transferred to this new area and that she had someone to baptize because I had never heard of this Sister Spencer person. Tracy keep up the good work. I am so proud of you for being such a hard worker. It is so nuts that soon you will be at the halfway mark on your mission. These missions really fly by.
Man, conference was amazing. My favorite session was by far the first session especially the talks by Boyd K. Packer and Cheryl C. Lant. They really laid it down. We need to be working so much harder as families and members of the true church of Jesus Christ because it is getting so wicked in this world. I usually didn't like the talks the women gave at conference but that second talk of the session was amazing. Women need to stop trying to be like the wicked woman on TV, we need to turn of the TVs get rid off the DVDs and anything that supports them, and need to live up to our responsibilities as witnesses of the truth. I loved how they talked about the woman's primary role of being a nurturer and everything in society says otherwise but that is the responsibility. It made me change me realize that I need to really look carefully and find the right person to be my eternal companion after the mission. I am really grateful for the excellent mother that I have who is a strong woman and the epitome of the type of woman we need in the world today.
We had lots of investigators show up to conference but they all left after like an hour. I guess they got bored and it was really tragic to me that people in this world are so unaccustomed to learning pure spiritual truth and council that they reject it and label it as boring. They want a pastor that fills the room with his loud speaking and charisma and leads them slowly down to hell.
So this week we had about 10 or more investigators drop out of nowhere. We had an amazingly spiritual lesson with the family of Margarita Pena who we have been teaching for two months and the spirit was super strong. Her husband, who had never participated much, said the first prayer in his married life ( 25 years or so) and Margarita was so excited and they committed to read and pray together to know if it was true right after we left. This was last friday. They came to conference on Sunday. On Monday we were supposed to teach them and they called us ten minutes before and told us to save the trouble, they were not going to change religion. They still let us come over and we tried everything they just don't really care anymore. The sad thing is that it is a family of five and they have even told me that they all think the Book of Mormon is true and they have felt the spirit but they have always been catholic and "it has never treated them badly." Of course it doesn't, they don't have to live any commandments and they get an artificial sensation of the spirit as they worship their idols, their santos, y la virgen maria. Man, the catholic church is so freakin' corrupt... sorry I won't go on a Catholic Church rant right now but I would like to.
Yeah, we have basically been doing a lot of tracting. However we have one investigator that will for sure be baptized. His name is sergio and he is the 17 year old son of Nacho and Chayo that we baptized in January. He came up from Monterrey Mexico for spring break and he never even believed in a God before but we had some really spiritual lessons with him and he has begun to pray for the first time in his life and He now knows that the church is true. The only thing is, he has to return to school in Mexico on Saturday but he wanted to be baptized here so his parents can see it. However, he doesn't want to do it this week because as of right now he has only even believed in a God for 4 days and he wants to wait maybe a week. He says that he for sure will go to the church in Monterrey and he is reading the Book of Mormon a lot. He is way awesome and I think that he will prepare to serve a mission in two years.
Anyway, things are going good. Love ya all. The church is true and I love the gospel.
Love,
Elder Bernard
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
I am so glad that Tracy will be having a baptism this week. I think she forgot to send me the email that said she was transferred to this new area and that she had someone to baptize because I had never heard of this Sister Spencer person. Tracy keep up the good work. I am so proud of you for being such a hard worker. It is so nuts that soon you will be at the halfway mark on your mission. These missions really fly by.
Man, conference was amazing. My favorite session was by far the first session especially the talks by Boyd K. Packer and Cheryl C. Lant. They really laid it down. We need to be working so much harder as families and members of the true church of Jesus Christ because it is getting so wicked in this world. I usually didn't like the talks the women gave at conference but that second talk of the session was amazing. Women need to stop trying to be like the wicked woman on TV, we need to turn of the TVs get rid off the DVDs and anything that supports them, and need to live up to our responsibilities as witnesses of the truth. I loved how they talked about the woman's primary role of being a nurturer and everything in society says otherwise but that is the responsibility. It made me change me realize that I need to really look carefully and find the right person to be my eternal companion after the mission. I am really grateful for the excellent mother that I have who is a strong woman and the epitome of the type of woman we need in the world today.
We had lots of investigators show up to conference but they all left after like an hour. I guess they got bored and it was really tragic to me that people in this world are so unaccustomed to learning pure spiritual truth and council that they reject it and label it as boring. They want a pastor that fills the room with his loud speaking and charisma and leads them slowly down to hell.
So this week we had about 10 or more investigators drop out of nowhere. We had an amazingly spiritual lesson with the family of Margarita Pena who we have been teaching for two months and the spirit was super strong. Her husband, who had never participated much, said the first prayer in his married life ( 25 years or so) and Margarita was so excited and they committed to read and pray together to know if it was true right after we left. This was last friday. They came to conference on Sunday. On Monday we were supposed to teach them and they called us ten minutes before and told us to save the trouble, they were not going to change religion. They still let us come over and we tried everything they just don't really care anymore. The sad thing is that it is a family of five and they have even told me that they all think the Book of Mormon is true and they have felt the spirit but they have always been catholic and "it has never treated them badly." Of course it doesn't, they don't have to live any commandments and they get an artificial sensation of the spirit as they worship their idols, their santos, y la virgen maria. Man, the catholic church is so freakin' corrupt... sorry I won't go on a Catholic Church rant right now but I would like to.
Yeah, we have basically been doing a lot of tracting. However we have one investigator that will for sure be baptized. His name is sergio and he is the 17 year old son of Nacho and Chayo that we baptized in January. He came up from Monterrey Mexico for spring break and he never even believed in a God before but we had some really spiritual lessons with him and he has begun to pray for the first time in his life and He now knows that the church is true. The only thing is, he has to return to school in Mexico on Saturday but he wanted to be baptized here so his parents can see it. However, he doesn't want to do it this week because as of right now he has only even believed in a God for 4 days and he wants to wait maybe a week. He says that he for sure will go to the church in Monterrey and he is reading the Book of Mormon a lot. He is way awesome and I think that he will prepare to serve a mission in two years.
Anyway, things are going good. Love ya all. The church is true and I love the gospel.
Love,
Elder Bernard
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
mar 31
Hey Fam,
We have been doing something called the "week of sacrifice," I think I mentioned it in my last email but I don't remember. Anyway, we are studying the last week of the savior's life everyday and we are sacrificing by doing at least five hours of straight up tracting a day, having a zone fast everyday, and we are sacrificing almost all of P-day today so that we can prove to the Lord our love to him and so that we can find the people that God has prepared. I think it is also because the past two months we have not met our mission baptizing goal and it is critical that we meet it in order to double our baptisms this year. I know that for this week of sacrifice, the Lord will reward us heavily and we will have people to baptize.
In our finding so far, we find one person, Carlos Dehoyo, a puertariqueño, that is an amazing investigator. We feel really good about him. He had amazing questions and I think that he has totally been prepared by the Lord but we have only taught him once.
We had to drop other investigators that were not progressing. One of my favorites was Evelyn and I will send you a picture of her and her son and I so that you know who she is. We have taught her for quite a while and she finally came to church but she told us that she felt uncomfortable and wants to stick with the catholic church. She would never keep commitments and would not read the Book of Mormon so there is nothing else we could do for her. I think that she will join the church in the future but she just needs time.
We have four investigators, Oscar and Consuelo, Olivia, and Francisca, that all want to be baptized but they all live in government single mother housing and if they get married they will lose the housing. It is all corrupt over there and there is way more men than woman even but as long as they aren't on the legal paper work it goes unnoticed but if they get married they will lose their free housing. For that reason it is hard to get them married and baptized. Pray that God will help us come up with a solution to this situation because if we can work something out then they can all get married and baptized this month.
We also have another family, the Peña family, that we are working with and I think they will all get baptized but it is really hard to get a date set with them. We have been beating around the bush and we need to cut right to it. We will try to get baptismal dates with them this week.
So pretty much everything is good here. Don't have much more to say. I love you guys. Pray that we will find people to teach and baptize.
Tengo un testimonio fuerte que la iglesia ha sido restaurada otra vez al mundo y nosotros somos tan fortunados que la tenemos. Yo se que Jesucristo nos dirige in esta obra que el nos esta guiando para encontrar sus ovejas aqui en Baytown. Me encanta esta oportunidad de ser misionero y realmente es lo mejor dos años que hay.
Love y'all,
Elder Bernard
We have been doing something called the "week of sacrifice," I think I mentioned it in my last email but I don't remember. Anyway, we are studying the last week of the savior's life everyday and we are sacrificing by doing at least five hours of straight up tracting a day, having a zone fast everyday, and we are sacrificing almost all of P-day today so that we can prove to the Lord our love to him and so that we can find the people that God has prepared. I think it is also because the past two months we have not met our mission baptizing goal and it is critical that we meet it in order to double our baptisms this year. I know that for this week of sacrifice, the Lord will reward us heavily and we will have people to baptize.
In our finding so far, we find one person, Carlos Dehoyo, a puertariqueño, that is an amazing investigator. We feel really good about him. He had amazing questions and I think that he has totally been prepared by the Lord but we have only taught him once.
We had to drop other investigators that were not progressing. One of my favorites was Evelyn and I will send you a picture of her and her son and I so that you know who she is. We have taught her for quite a while and she finally came to church but she told us that she felt uncomfortable and wants to stick with the catholic church. She would never keep commitments and would not read the Book of Mormon so there is nothing else we could do for her. I think that she will join the church in the future but she just needs time.
We have four investigators, Oscar and Consuelo, Olivia, and Francisca, that all want to be baptized but they all live in government single mother housing and if they get married they will lose the housing. It is all corrupt over there and there is way more men than woman even but as long as they aren't on the legal paper work it goes unnoticed but if they get married they will lose their free housing. For that reason it is hard to get them married and baptized. Pray that God will help us come up with a solution to this situation because if we can work something out then they can all get married and baptized this month.
We also have another family, the Peña family, that we are working with and I think they will all get baptized but it is really hard to get a date set with them. We have been beating around the bush and we need to cut right to it. We will try to get baptismal dates with them this week.
So pretty much everything is good here. Don't have much more to say. I love you guys. Pray that we will find people to teach and baptize.
Tengo un testimonio fuerte que la iglesia ha sido restaurada otra vez al mundo y nosotros somos tan fortunados que la tenemos. Yo se que Jesucristo nos dirige in esta obra que el nos esta guiando para encontrar sus ovejas aqui en Baytown. Me encanta esta oportunidad de ser misionero y realmente es lo mejor dos años que hay.
Love y'all,
Elder Bernard
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
