Family!
That's right, there is
a new member in the branch as of yesterday! Mine and Elder Wells'
investigator A----- is now officially a member of the Dayton Spanish Branch!
But before you get too excited, let me add a small disclaimer: we didn't
have a baptism or a confirmation this weekend.... Solve that
riddle! Ok, fine, I'll solve it for you, here goes:
So A----- was a
referral from some Sister missionaries a while back. We started teaching
her, and I was amazed right from the beginning at how many spiritual
experiences she had had throughout her life. I was super excited to be
teaching her, because it seemed like the Lord had touched her life so much;
much, much, more than any other person I have ever taught. After the
first time we met with her, we called her a 'Platinum Investigator".
Well we continued to see her, but only every now and again because she could
only meet with us once or maybe twice a week. At the end of one visit, we
left her a restoration pamphlet and invited her to read it in preparation for
our next meeting. We came back this past week, and she told us that she
had read the whole thing! And she had some other news: after reading
it, she started to remember some things about her past. She had a period
of time in her life where she went through a lot of grief in a very short
period of time, and because of that, she has a difficult time remembering parts
of her past from that time period. Well, one of the things that she
remembered after reading about the Restoration was that she was possibly
baptized in our church back in Mexico. We told her we could find out for
sure, so we got some info from her, and yesterday we sat down with the branch
president and searched for her records. And guess what!? She was
baptized in Mexico nearly 20 years ago! So we moved her records over to
the branch, and now we have another member! Amazing! Or at least I
think so... So yeah, this week my testimony grew so much of how involved
the Lord is in every single one of our lives. I've seen it many times so
far on my mission, but I just couldn't believe how miraculous it was that she
was finally found after almost 20 years... I know the Lord has a purpose for
each of us, and that he cares about each of us deeply and personally.
One more milagrito
real quick. We found some former investigators this week that had lost
contact with the missionaries a few years ago. But after the missionaries
stopped coming, they continued to read in the Book of Mormon for a while, and
they read over 100 pages before they stopped! (they stopped in the Isaiah
chapters...) So we'll be teaching them again this week!
I had a few other
crazy experiences this week. We had to fight our way through some
roosters to get to a door that we were going to knock. (Really the
roosters just flew away when we got close, but saying that we had to fight our
way through them sounds so much better.) So yeah, I included a picture of
me next to a rooster statue as a momento of that experience.
Somebody told us this
week that this has been the worst winter in Ohio "since '78". I
don't have any other Ohio winters to compare it to, so I guess I believe
them...
Last thing.
Don't tell anybody, but I saw about 2 minutes of the Super Bowl! We were
in the house of one of our investigators from Guatemala, and after the lesson he
turned on the tv to the Super Bowl (in Spanish of course), and his wife gave us
some drink she made with hot milk and oats. We had to drink the
drink she gave us real quick so as not to offend her, so we were in the same
room as a tv that was playing the Super Bowl. I didn't really watch any
of it, but I did see that Denver was getting killed at halftime...
And that is all!
Have a wonderful week! Learn a Spanish word this week, and let me know
what it is next Monday! (there's your commitment from a missionary
for the week!)
Love,
Elder Foote
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| A Real Rooster? |
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| Dayton Patented, What? |