January 9, 2012

Some experiences from this week:

On Monday night we went to visit an inactive returned missionary and his family. When I was here before he wouldn´t even say hi to us or one of his relatives would go upstairs and invite him to come down and listen to us and he never wanted to, but since then he´s totally changed. He recieved us and the ward missionaries that went with us warmly and apologized for not recieving the missionaries before (even though he didn´t even know that I had been in the ward before). We had no idea what to teach him. So, I started admiring his leather scripture covers he had made while he was serving a mission and asked him about them. While he was talking to me about them 1 Nephi 8 kept coming into my mind. When I turned the bible over I saw on the back a rendering of the tree of life as Lehi saw in his vision. I knew at that moment what we had to share with him and I had him open up to 1 Nephi 8. We read some verses together of the experience of Lehi when he first sees and partakes of the fruit. Then I asked him how this experience could apply to him. He then expressed his regret for having distanced himself from the church for several years and recognized his duty as a father and husband in helping his family reach the celestial kingdom and that fruit which is precious and desireable above all other things. He literally poured out his soul to God when he said the final prayer and comitted to go to church yesterday. It was an amazing lesson guided by the Spirit. However, to my great diasppointment they didn´t show up to church yesterday.

However, we had another incredible lesson with a recently reactivated family (of which the mother still hadn´t gone to church with her husband and daughters). We taught them about the importance of keeping the sabbath day holy and a member (baptized 2 years ago) that was with us shared a most powerful testimony of the importance of attending church regardless of what other ward members may do or say to us. The mom, Silvia, cried several times during the lesson. When she came to Church on sunday she along with her whole family were bawling and hugging each other after sacrament meeting ended. It was so beautiful to see. This family as well when I was in this ward before had no interest whatsoever in going back to Church. Know we´re going to work with one of the sons that still hasn´t gone with them to church yet.

We´ve been so busy teaching people and atending to other zone leader responsibilities that sometimes we feel like there´s not enough time in the day to do everything. Which is actually a good thing. I feel like this is the busiest time in my whole mission, just like I hoped it would be. Hopefully we can keep it up. We´ve been finding people to teach, but the hardthing is getting them to go to church on sunday. This week is our zone conference. I have to train the missionaries about the doctrine of Christ and inviting and helping people to make committments.

Ya, sometimes they put us in trios when there´s an odd number of missionaries in the mission or when one missionary is waiting for a foreign companion to arrive to Mexico.