Week 90: The Words of a Prophet
I hope you all had an amazing Conference weekend! I hope you all learned a lot like I did!
After pday we cleaned up Predicad Mi Evangelio by calling and texting all of our green and yellow dots.
On Tuesday we had exchanges with the APs. I stayed here in Chan Chan with Elder Beizaga. I had set a goal that I wanted to smile more, and then even before lunch almost all of our lessons we had planned fell through, and then our plans kept changing during the day because lessons were canceling. It really was an opportunity to practice smiling. We taught hermana Mirian for the first time in a while. E Beizaga had taught her when he was here, and he told me she seems like a totally different person now and is a lot more receptive. We later had a lesson with hermano Jose, Andrea's brother. Before he wasn't really interested, but he's going through a pretty tough time right now and has softened a little to the gospel. He doesn't know much, but that's our purpose. We testified of Christ and His Atonement and spoke with much love. We're going to keep meeting with him and expressing a lot of love.
On Wednesday we finished the exchange and then immediately had a lesson with hermana Elizabeth. She's very interested and I know she'll progress well if she'll come to church. We'll see what we can do with her. In the afternoon we visited hermana Andrea and hermana Carmen. Later we visited hermano Valentinto. He's progressing very well and is pretty much ready for his baptism next week. He's so funny too. In one of our lessons he literally broke down laughing and couldn't contain himself. Yeah it was annoying but he's a 9 year old boy and it was pretty funny. His mom, Génesis, is helping us out so much with the teaching and she's making a big time sacrifice, but she knows that this is the most important thing right now. I know the Lord will bless her. After that we visited our friend Cicerón. He was a street contact we had done on Sunday night. We had ended up talking for 30 minutes about various topics that day and we got another lesson for Wednesday. This lesson was amazing. Hermano Cicerón has lots of questions, but is sincere. He read all of the restoration pamphlet we gave him and he already knew a lot about the church from what he'd read online. We decided to teach the Book of Mormon first because he had questions about it, with the intent of making it a short lesson. We ended up teaching the entire Restoration backwards and it turned into a very spiritual lesson. He understood the lesson really well and what interested him most was that there are prophets and apostles here today. He understood perfectly that there had been an apostasy and that there were no prophets or apostles for ablong time. Naturally we invited him to General Conference and he accepted without hesitation. That lesson was spiritually driven and it was very reassuring because I know the spirit is with us. We then rushed over to hermaba Patricia's house to teach hnom Jhonathan, Kiara, and Estefano about prophets and the restoration to invite them to conference. It was also a very good lesson and they were all interested in the fact that President Nelson is 99. The lessons we have with them are so awesome because it's so amazing to see young people who get very excited to learn about the gospel. I'm so excited to see their baptism.
Thursday came and quickly went down to Buenos Aires to do a baptismal interview for them. Then we went to district council which was moved to Thursday because the hermanas had to go to interpol. Elder Keller bought us all maracuya cheesecake for some reason and it was so rich we all almost died. We did weekly planning and then that night we had another lesson with Valentino. We taught himnthe law of chastity using the example of Joseph in Egypt. We then rushed over to the chapel for the farewell noche de hogar for Hermana Rodriguez. We got there 20 minutes late (typical Chan Chan Elders compared to the hermanas) We invited a few of our friends over and saw hermana Gabriela there as well as Andrea with her brother Jose. We listened to a spiritual message and then we all took turns giving a goodbye speech to Hermana Rodriguez. She's been here 6 months and I can see the effect she's had on the ward. It went a little long so we weren't able to play the games we had prepared but we had pleeeenty of snacks. Keke, chips, limonada, oreos, galletas, todo. Era muy rico! We even gave some empanadas to the hermanas of Central and the Los Cedros Elders who were below doing a baptismal interview. It was a good activity and everyone had fun, especially our investigators.
Friday was full of good lessons. First we taught hermana Rosmery about prophets in preparation for General Conference. Then hermana Merly came with us to teach hermana Gabriela. She's already read to 1 Nefi 11 in 5 days! Elegida! We taught her the Book of Mormon, how to know it's true, and we prepared her for General Conference. Afterwards we went with hermano Waldir to teach hermano Cicerón. Man hermano Waldir is powerful! We went over the restoration again and focused on prophets and Joseph Smith this time. Man hermano Cicerón is getting really excited that there's a living prophet today. Afterwards we prepped hermao Valentino for conference and then had a brief but important talk with hermana Isabel and hermano Alejandro about marriage. They have to get divorced first so they can get married which makes it really tough, but we invited them to pray, ask God what He wants them to do, and then pay attention to conference.
On Sunday after breakfast we went over to the chapel in California to watch Conference there. We got there at the same moment as hermano Cicerón so we accompanied him in. Hermano Valentino also came as well as hermana Isabel and her family. Hermana Merly accompanied hna Gabriela too! Wow hna Merly is already a missionary! That session was great, I particually was touched by Elder Eyring's message about the Holy Ghost. Hna Gabriela was taking some pretty good notes while we listened! Afterwards we talked with hno Cicerón and he said that he had thought he was going to hear some sort of pastor-type people speaking for long periods of time while shouting at us, but he was deeply surprised upon hearing short, well put together and spiritually delivered messages, with the main focus being to strengthen faith in Christ. He said he didn't have words for what he felt and saw! *finger snapping thing* We had told everyone that the prophet was going to speak during that session like he normally does, so we got pretty worried when his name wasn't announced, but our friends didn't seem to notice. After lunch we watched the last session and we were so hapoy to hear President Nelson's talk. His talk answered many of the questions I had written down before the conference. Think in a more celestial way. Pensar en una manera celestial. I'm going to be studying that a lot. Viewing others with charity and love will make us more virtuous. Behaving like we are in the temple will also help us think more celestially. And then he announced 2 new temples in Perú! Piura and Huancayo! That means there's been a temple in Perú announced every conference I've been here on my mission, with 2 being announced in the last one! ¡Qué gozo!
Welp this was quite a week! This coming week is transfers and I don't know what's going to happen. I've absolutely loved my time here in Chan Chan with Elder Agostinelli and I've learned and developed a lot. I hope I stay, but we'll see what happens. Have an absolutely fantastic week!
Elder Jensen
1. La Luuuuuuuuuna! - Philonius Gru
2. Buenos Aires entrevista
3/4/5. Cheescake consejo de distrito
6. Some guys from a different stake
7. When I accidentally spilt jello drink all over my comp and the floor
8. Taxi
9. Chau chau Rodriguez noche de hogar
Comments
Post a Comment