la cosas de este semana

Hola mi familia y amigos,

So I’m going to jump right into it about one of the blessings in disguise that happened this week. So Elder Barron and I have decided recently to bike some days, even though we have a car in the mission, so one day we were biking to the church from an investigators house so we could teach English class to help the sisters out, and both of us got a flat tire. Luckily we were fairly close to home, but it was still a 30 minute walk, so we would miss the English class. We call the sisters and they say that they are fine without us, so there wasn't any problems there. Once we got home we weren't sure where we should go next, so we prayed about it and Elder Barron had the prompting to go and talk to a man that he hadn't seen since before I got to the mission who lived right by the investigator we were at just before. So we drive over there and knock on his door but no one answered. And at this point we were both tired and a little irritated with our situation since we had been prompted to come here, but it seemed like there was no reason for us to be there. We decided to go and talk to the neighbors since they will know where this guy is probably and while we are talking to the mom her son who is 24 sees a Book of Mormon we are holding and asks if we are missionaries from the Catholic church; we tell him no but we are from the Mormon church. He then comes outside and talks to us for about an hour about how he has been looking for a way to grow closer to God and to change his life since he is trying to get over drugs, alcohol and some other crazy stuff. So we share Ether 12:27 and he loves it and tells us he knows he has been waiting for us, it was a super awesome. (his name is Andie by the way). And to make things even better we visited him yesterday and now his whole family is interested in what we have to say. It was an awesome experience.

The other major thing I want to tell y’all is about our investigator Carla. She is an 18 year
old girl from Guatemala who has been investigating the church for around 4 months now and we have been trying to get her to commit to baptism since she has done everything she needs to to be ready for it. So we had a lesson with her in a member’s home yesterday to see if the experiences of the Cubas family could help her in her decision, and it was one of the most amazing lessons I’ve ever had. Sister Cubas shared her conversion story and it was almost exactly like Carla’s story. Sister Cubas bore her testimony about how the church has changed and blessed her life and then Brother Cubas and the kids did the same thing. It was so awesome to see their testimonies, and at the end of the lesson Carla said she would be baptized in December because she wanted some of her family that don't live in Louisiana to come to the baptism. It was super awesome.

I also want all of you to know how you all can affect the people around you to bring them to Christ. I know it is scary and hard to do, but trust me when I tell you that even in this short month in the field I have seen more things happen because of the testimonies of members and friends than I have seen happen anywhere else. Sometimes us missionaries teach and bear testimony till we are blue in the face, but what is needed is a friend’s testimony to truly convert a person. So my challenge for you all today is to share your testimony with a friend who may be struggling and I promise it will help them.

I love you all and hope you have an awesome week