1/19/15 Another Week Here in Alameda!

Hey guys!  Another week down here in Alameda.  Time flies and this week went by really fast as well... I can't believe that the sister missionaries that arrived at the MTC the same time when I came are going to finish in a few weeks!  Wow, eighteen months already?

Haha!  Well this past week was great.  We worked really hard.  On Wednesday, President Crapo, Hermana Crapo, and the Assistants came to work in the zone with us.  We woke up early to prepare for the meeting.  I had to give a district meeting in front of the missionaries from my district, and one of the Assistants, Elder G. from Guatemala.

Then we went to work.  From 3:30 in the afternoon to 9 at night we worked with one of the Assistants’ Elder S.  It was great and we gave it our all.  He helped us learn some new ways to teach, and we took him around our area.  One of the things that we learned is that the Lord is preparing families.  We contacted all the families we saw on the street and we got return visits later on in the week.  A lot of the families are really good and receptive.  So we worked like that for the rest of the week.  We are finding a lot of investigators teaching a bunch of lessons... but the biggest challenge for us right now in the area is getting people to go to church.  We cannot baptize them if they do not go to church.  Yesterday we were kind of let down because only a few of the investigators showed up to church.  But it is all good... we are going to work on that and focus on that this coming week.

I was reading in the teachings of Joseph Smith, there is a section called "the evils of rushing ordination" and he says that we should not rush ordination or any other ordinance on people that are not ready for the responsibility.

The second half of the week we kind of hit a wall.  I was thinking long and hard about why... and I realized that the Lord is telling us he wants us to work in a different way.  Out of 18 new converts only 3 shows up regularly.  We cannot expect the Lord to bless us with more blessings or people to teach, nor baptisms, if we cannot take care and respect what we already have and have been blessed with.  This week we are going to work with what we already have, and try to better that. 

But all in all, a good week! I love you guys, and take care!  Don’t forget to say your prayers and read your scriptures everyday.