November 18, 2013

This week has been an awesome week with a lot of planning and a lot of preparation. 

Spiritual: This week we taught Brendan and Bryan, two thirteen year old twins. They are the younger brothers of Laura, our recent convert. We went over to their hotel this week to just check up on them Saturday night to make sure they were coming to church. When we got there, there was a weird spirit that was there. There were a lot of bad feelings in the family and not a very happy place at all. We sat back and observed for a while. The Spirit then inspired us to not be dormant any more. We had to do something. They were being horrible to their sister and we just couldn't handle it. We called them out on it and committed them to be nice this week and had a super powerful lesson on why family is important. We had an awesome lesson. It was so spiritual not because we were in a church, or because it was a calm peaceful place, but because they really needed this message. We ended and were walking away feeling uplifted and like we had done a ton of good, even though we were next to the pool sitting at this glass table in the freezing cold. We had taken the umbrella out of the table to teach as well. When we were walking away we heard this huge smash and we looked back to see our investigators standing over this broken pile of glass. They had tried to put the umbrella back and had broken this table! The next second they were both gone. I have never seen anyone jump a fence so quickly. They disappeared just like true "hood rats." Sigh. In the end it was a good time to teach about repentance and we left on a good note. It’s crazy the background some people come from, but everyone needs the gospel. This church is not a perfect place for only perfect people; it’s a hospital for the humble. 

 Funny: This week was also Zone Conference! It was incredible to hear all of the senior couples talk about proper care of vacuum cleaners and teach us once again how to care for our bikes. Tehehe. During zone conference we also have the car check where they make sure you are keeping the car clean. We have a full time car now and we make sure sure sure it is way clean. The night before the conference we were backing out of the apartment and for some strange reason, Elder Kerby missed and the right side mirror got hit by a large pole. Awkward zone conference for sure. haha 

 Where I am at: This week we have got a ton of new investigators. One of the more notable ones is Abram, our maintenance man. We needed our pilot light lit so we called him over and we started talking to him. (I know it’s an evil, tricky way to force someone to listen to you but we had him trapped so what else were we going to do??) At the end of the visit he turned to us and said that our heater was officially broken. Dang. It’s getting cold. But, he invited us over to his house so he could learn more!!! I am okay with the cold if it means someone is going to join the church. We are planning on a lot of things breaking over the next little while so he will just happen to come by. :) Our other miracle this week was a 17 year old boy named Matt. He is a super devout Catholic and his dad is fairly high up in his parish. We had met with him for a while, and we just barely this week decided to pick back up with him. We were asking him about his church and he told us that he hadn't been to mass in over a month. WOW. He said that he just keeps telling his dad that he has homework or something like that. We invited him to church and we have extremely high hopes for him in the near future. It’s so cool how the gospel makes a serious impact on people. I know the reason these two individuals want to come closer to Christ is because of the truthfulness of the gospel and the spirit prompting them in the right direction. I am so excited for them!! We set a zone goal of having 20 baptisms before Christmas. It’s amazing how the Lord is blessing us to actually accomplish this goal we set in faith. It’s going to happen. As you can tell the work is really picking up and miracles are starting to flood in. The Lord blesses us for righteous obedience.