Christmas Week

Hey family and friends.  So this week was pretty sweet.  We saw some big time miracles and there were also some disappointments, but let's jump in.

 

So we have been teaching the Garcia family.  Father, Hilario and daughter, Carolina are the most interested, but we are teaching the whole family.  Mother, Lorena is pretty cool too.  She's always busy doing house stuff when we come by, but she reads everything we leave her.  So on Christmas Eve, we had plans to go over to the house.  We bought them a few small gifts because they weren't really going to have much of a Christmas due to some stuff.  On the way there, we ran into a blind lady that got off the bus.  She hit the crosswalk button and the light changed but didn't do anything to advise her that it had changed.  We walked across the street and ended up walking with her all the way to her destination.  She ended up being a really cool person.  We could tell the lady she was meeting up with doesn't like missionaries much, but that's okay.  We felt awesome as we walked away. 

 

So, we get to the Garcia house.  We walk in and say we'd like to talk with the whole family about a Christmas message.  We show them the Nativity video from biblevideos.org,and they really liked it.  The son, Lalo, that just returned home from Colorado, said that he feels different in the house now.  When he came home there was a different feeling and he recognized that it was what we were sharing.  The mom then jumped in and said that even though she hasn't joined in on any of the lessons, she knows that we are the real deal.  She called us angels and then gave us each a porcelain angel to remember them by.  We walked away from the house feeling so amazing!

 

This week, we went by and we were a little concerned that they were becoming a little too converted to us instead of the church.  We had a full lesson recapping what it is that we do as missionaries.  We talked a lot about baptism and how their family can be together forever.  That night, we officially picked up the mom as an investigator and we also gave the whole family a baptismal date for February.  We set it kind of far off because the dad works on Sundays (for now) and wants to be able to do this as a family thing.  Carolina's response was my favorite, "I'm in!"  In her prayer she asked God to help them do everything that is needed to get closer to Him as a family.  I was flabbergasted.

 

In less-uplifting news, we dropped Oralia and Delfino this week. They have started going to another church.  We're pretty frustrated about it.  They have had tons of witnesses that it is true, but they just did not want to get married.  We apparently didn't teach the Restoration well enough, because they assured us that "it was the same thing."  Also, we're pretty sure that they have some friends going to that other church, which is something they didn't have here.  The whole experience helped me to appreciate the social conversion a bit more.  Oh well, hopefully they'll get it later.

 

As a zone, we had the best week we have had in months!  We were super stoked about that.  Our district's numbers this past week were the best that they have been in 3 years.  The hastening is happening!  It's so cool to see it play out.

 

Love you all and have a marvelous week!

Elder Christensen

 

PS it was so awesome to see the fam on Christmas.  Love you!