Titles Are Hard
This turned out really long actually. Was not expecting that.
The zone has put a lot of emphasis on finding more people to teach this week. That's tough a lot of the time, because a harsh reality is that we're the only two missionaries on these two islands, and there are so many children of God who need the gospel here. It's also pretty tough that so many of them want nothing to do with it. Finding is a grind, and street contacting is only effective at a few specific hours a day, and even then not many people are interested. When we clean out our contacts list, like half the people who are interested actually live in Vallecas on the mainland, since our sim card used to be there or something. Facebook work is a haystack-needle situation.
But it's okay, because we have at least three people we found in the last three months with methods like these. And that's what matters.
Carmen, who we just stopped in the street back in November, has decided that yes, she wants to get baptized. We've told her that she's ready now, and it could happen next week, but she's happy about the fact that Elder Quintana might come back to visit in March and kinda wants to do it then. If we did nail down the date then, I'm sure it would happen, but we're going to try to set it earlier. Pray for us and for her.
We had an exchange with the Elders in Vecindario, and I got to work with Elder Monteiro again. He's about to wrap up his training, and I was the first person he went on an exchange with. It was cool to do it again and see his progress. We had a FIRE video call with Melisa, and taught her about the Plan of Salvation. She had a lot of questions, and like a lot of people kind of tried to apologize for that. But they really added to our discussion. She had a hard time with the book of Revelation (which in Spanish has the slightly more scary and fitting name of Apocalipsis) and how it seems so different from the Gospels. We told her about how the Plan of Salvation is a plan of love and progression, resurrection will be a universal gift, and the importance of both the Savior's atonement and obedience. It was amazing.
Turned out that Elder Monteiro hasn't had a ton of chances to teach that lesson, so we spent some time practicing and discussing it afterwards. It's such an awesome concept, and every detail makes it cooler.
Back in Fuerteventura it was kind of a slow week, just trying to find people like I talked about.
Big highlight though- I've talked about Zenón's grandkids before. It's kind of stalled with them, but since we won't have to travel to Lanzarote for a while, we decided to buckle down and just get some time to teach them. In the past Zenón has coordinated with his kids to set up the lessons, but it hasn't been easy. They're not actively opposed to the grandkids getting baptized, just haven't been making it the easiest. He ended up sending us their numbers so we could give it a shot, and we scheduled a few times to teach them this week, and if all goes well they can get baptized on Saturday! It's going to take a bit of work but I think it's going to go though.
Read most, maybe all of 3 Nephi this week. It's pretty cool. Besides the obvious highlight that it's mostly the direct words of Jesus Christ to the Nephites, there's so much simple clarity to the stuff He's teaching. Christ clarified the correct way to baptize, established the sacrament, prophesied the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the gathering of Israel, and explained how to organize and hold meetings in His Church. Here's the takeaway though. At least three times I read a verse and thought "There it is. That's the invitation to everyone to come unto Christ." He says it a few times (probably a lesson in the repetition) but here's my favorite:
3 Nephi 27:20
20 Now this is the commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day
That's Christ talking to everyone, ever. We talk a ton as missionaries about faith->repentance->baptism->
I went into this thinking this was going to be a slow week that would be hard to write about. That wasn't the case. Turned out really long. My bad. It is, however, a week with like no photos. Sorry.
Happy P-day! For us it'll be cool, the Vecindario Elders are coming here for an exchange, and one of my Dad's old friends is going to pretend to be immigration police and convince them they're getting deported.
I hope your week is that ^^^^^^ fun,
Elder Curtis
Pictures:
Like I said, not a ton. So what better time to join the Google Photos?
When the videocall cancels.
Got a Christmas package! Thanks Nana and Papa!
Cleaning the contacts list... I have a lot of respect for the Elders who talked to "Fire Eyes" on the street and got his phone number to teach him the gospel.
A Facebook group, after 3 months of deliberation, finally approved my English class ad in Talavera, my last area, and posted it. With three months of waiting, I hope they had to call in Mark Zuckerberg himself to weigh in.
Comments
Post a Comment