Monday, November 28, 2016

Awesome experiences this week!

Hey guys! 
Well this was a great week! 
I just can't stand how lucky my kid is! He is having sooo many awesome experiences his first change! Things that ive witnessed like after 3 months on the mission! He is lucky to start in an awesome area with awesome people!
 The thing about this place is that it is a town like Wickenburg. El Paraiso is like a small city type of thing. Really well developed. Its like living in Teguz without the mountains, the heat, the prideful people, crazy taxis, and especially without the violence.
 So, the people actually leave their doors open! The people are really open! I think ill share a couple awesome experiences from this week:
One of them is totally awesome, but of course it all builds up so i need to start from the beginning.
So last change we worked alot with inactive families. We found some families who really liked us helping them. One of them was Fam Vallecillo. We kept coming by and teaching them and animating them to return to church, and it worked! That obviouisly made us really happy. But we didnt see all of the blessings until now. About two weeks ago we were teaching them and then we left, then this joven was passing us and then we contact her, she was really positive! We asked where she lived and she said Right there! Pointing to the house that we just left. Turns out that she is family with Fam Vallecillo! So we´ve been teaching her a bunch and shes gone to church a bunch. She has been incredibly pilas mostly because of the help of the ACTIVE family vallecillo! Last week we had divisions with our ZLs here and I took Elder Garry with me to teach her, we felt we needed to go more deeply into the importance of the book of mormon. So we had an incredible lesson! A few days after we went back to verify, and we asked if she prayed for an answer from god about the truth of the book of mormon, and she said Yes. But she didnt want to share her experience (which is fine.. thats really personal) So then we asked her, What conclusion have you come to? She said, I really want to get baptized. But... the problem is my mother, I dont know if she will give me permission. She is 17 and super positive! A true convert! Tonight we will find out if her mom is going to give the green light to get baptized! I truly hope so, the way everything worked out there is no way that she cant. We are just got to keep praying. Its crazy that if we never started with the inactive family and activating them like we did, we would of probably never been here!
Ok so heres another cool Paraiso story: Last change elder Medina and I were contacting and we passed this house, and so we contacted it. Inside were 3 young adults. 2 hembras and 1 varon. The dude I can tell from the start was this cooool guy with long hair. We said who we were and what we wanted, to share a message of Jesus Christ. They jsut kind of laughed and looked at the dude, he just kind of chuckled. I was little offended, so i said Whats so funny? They let us in and they said something like Cristian doesnt believe in religion, he is reallly smart. He studies astronomy!
 I was like, Ohhh realllllly? So we started with a prayer and we just started talking to him, hearing his point of view. Then after a 15 minute lecture of his thoughts of why their is no God, it was our turn. No using the Bible or anything, just pure logic. I tore down all of his theories haha it was kind of embarrasing for him because his friends were totally convinced by us, they truly saw that we were on to something. We left that lesson with cristian agreeing with us that there IS something out there watching over us that created everything, and that anyother day we can come over and teach a little bit more of our beliefs. We didnt really talk much to his friends because he was really interesting.
After a couple weeks, we contacted Gaby! ONE of the friends that was there during that lesson. She let us in and said that she liked what we taught a couple weeks ago. So we taught her and her sisters and they liked it! They even accepted a baptismal fecha. The thing is that she is really caught up with exams from the university so she cant recieve us that much, so we kind of let her go just a little bit because we can never find her. 
Another day we somehow ended up at the OTHER friend that was there with us with crisitian, but she was not postivie at all. When we asked if she were willing to go to church with us if she recieved an answer to her prayers from God and she said No... so we realized she isnt one of the prepared people that we are looking for. But everything ALWAYS works out in the plans of God. So last week we contact this person, (Suami) really positive. She told us really specically where she lived and when we can come! We came this week and she was superrr positive! We taught on Thursday, and after the lesson she said we can go back on Saturday! whatt?! sweet! So we go back and taught the Book of Mormon and then we asked her if she wanted to go to church, once again, I want to, but I have to ask my mom, she is reallllly catholic. So she said she is going to to talk her into it. So then we leave. FOR SOME REASON, my companion suggests we go and visit Gaby again. Its been like two weeks since we´ve gone there. So i said, sure, good idea! So we go to her house and she opens the door, after all of the greetings she says, Hey! Do you know Suami?! We were shocked and confused and we said Yes... she said that early Gaby wanted to go over to Suami´s house but Suami told her no I cant, the mormons are coming over. And Gaby then realized it was us! Then she told us that they are BEST friends. And then the things is that when Gaby realized that Suami´s mom gave her permission to go to church, she wanted to go too! And her sisters too! and not only that, but Suami is really good friends with cristian too! And at this point they havent even gone to church yet but they really reached out to us and said, look we are really worried about him. We need your guys´s help. We don't know what else to do. Gaby even suggested that we take ¨cristian with us to church¨. Gaby told us that there was this one day that she was going through a very hard time because her friend, the legendary cool guy cristian gave her a book, an antichrist book. And she had really bad feelings inside and she felt really bad and didnt know what to do... then what happen? We showed up and talked about the Book of Mormon. She said that after that, she felt alot better. And yes, they went to church this sunday and THEY LOVED IT! This week we are going to work with Cristian... its crazy how this whole thing worked out. Not only do we as missionaries love helping families be united and together forever, we also love helping friendships grow and be happily together! All of this makes me miss my friends back home... No! snap out of it! Focus! hahaha 
So those were my favorite stories from this week, we had other cool little stories here and there but I dont have much time! I miss all of you guys!
 (Today I hit 13 months... but whos counting? ;)

1 comment:

  1. Julian, Im so happy for you..you are doing what you love and Im sure you are good at it. You have a big heart my God Bless you and keep you safe.

    Love
    Mrs. O

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