Week #58 *September 7, 2015

Andrea's Baptism

Hey everyone,

Well this week has been pretty good.  It honestly was a harder week as the majority of our appointments fell and we spent the majority of the week outside contacting, but amazingly we are still doing great. We just have a new wave of energy and we are really excited to get working really hard this week and we have a lot of great plans and appointments with people we met this week. 

This week I got to go to a little branch called Chepica in another zone, Santa Cruz.  It was awesome.  The hermanas are doing such a great job there.  It is a little branch of about 15 people the hermanas are the relief society president, young womens, and primary president and the elders have just about all the other callings other than  president of the rama, as luckily there is a member there who is the president.  It was a cool experience to see all the work the hermanas are doing there and we had a day full of miracles with less actives and new investigators.  I loved getting to go to another sector and seeing the hard work they are doing there.  We also got to ride bikes. Which I surprisingly liked. It was a lot faster and a lot of fun. They have hot pink beach cruzers with ´pink helmets. It is seriously the cutest thing ever.  The hermana is going to send me a pick she took with me on the bike and I will send one next week.  I got to work with Hermana Morales who is so great she is a missionary who is 30 years old and she is just amazing.  I was honestly a little intimidated being there as her coordinator. I thought how in the world am I going to give advice to a 30 year old, but She is awesome and the Lord helped me a lot as I was able to help them and give some advice on how they could help their sector and Hermana Morales is so awesome as she listened to everything I said and was so humble and willing to truly listen and apply the advice I gave her.  It was amazing to see just how much love she has for the people and desires to serve the Lord. It doesn’t even seem to affect her to much that she has to work with a lot of missionaries a lot younger than her.

This Saturday was Andreas baptism, which was also awesome. After so many missionaries working so long teaching her she finally made the decision to be baptized when the elders invited her. So we got to be there.  It is amazing to see just how important this work is and how every single one of the missionaries who had taught her and thought they had failed, as she still didn’t want to be baptized, truly played a part in her conversion.  Sometimes we  don’t  get to see the success of our work as missionaries, but I know that every contact we do and every person we teach we are helping to prepare them and being instruments in the Lords hands, as He knows when the timing is just right.

This week we also had a less active come to church after a very long time, who had basically told us he was never going to return. He came just to sacrament meeting but it was a big step for him and we are so excited to keep working with him and his wife as they are a cute little family. They were sealed in the temple but inactivate after some really hard things passed with some members in the branch. It was another testimony for me that everything we do in this work has an affect, as many missionaries had worked with them. At first I really wasn’t sure that they would return, but it just goes to show that we should never judge who is ready. Everyone has the same potential and the Lord knows their hearts and guides us in His work.

Well that is pretty much it for this week. I love you all so much and I am so grateful for all your love and support until next week!,

Love,

Hermana Stringham