Semana 41

¡Hola buenas tardes a todítos! How are you all? I hope you´ve all had a great week.

This week has been good. I can´t believe how fast this change went. We´re already in the last week. Next week are transfers and I also reach 11 months in the misión!! How fast the time goes by...

J came to church yesterday! Saturday night he was in a lot of doubt of whether or not he should come to church. In the end he decided to come because he sincerely wants to find out for himself if this is true. He came and had an amazing experience in church. The Spirit testified to him that this is true. All of the members were really friendly to him and he felt welcomed by everyone. At the end, he was super excited and wants to come next week. He´s also really excited to get baptized on June 14th. The Lord is really blessing us. 

We found a less active family this week in which we spent an hour looking for them. The missionaries who filled out their record filled out the address badly, so it took a while to find them. We were up in the mountains climbing up lots of steps until we found the house. It was a miracle that we found the house at the end. We also found ot that they have a daughter who´s about 25 years old who isn´t baptized but wants to get baptized. All the family wants to come back to church. 

Well that´s about it for this week. I´ll be sure to let you all know what the transfers are going to be. Hope you all have a great week!! Love you all!!

-Élder Gómez

The best birthday present I could ask for!

Semana 40

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great week!

We had the baptism for N on Friday!!! It was really good. She`s really happy and even though she doesn`t get support from her family and friends, she`s received a ton of support and love from the ward. We know that she will be able to stay active and faithful in the church and progress a ton. 

On Saturday morning, we had a multistake service project. We up in the mountains and planted trees. Me and my companion with another member planted eight trees. There were a lot of missionaries and members, and even our mission president and his wife came. It was a lot of fun. 

We`ve been finding a lot of new investigators. The only problem is that a lot of them can`t come to church. A lot of them work on Sundays and it`s hard for them to get Sundays off. Even though it`s a sacrifice, it`s so important that we asist church on Sundays. It`s there, where we renew our convenants and learn more about the Gospel. The Spirit can be felt so strong at church. Once you can get investigators to come to church the first time or at least do a tour of the chapel, it`s easier for them to keep coming because they`ve had spiritual experiences and want more. It`s just that first time though, that`s the most difficult. 

We found a new investigator named J this week. We were looking for an unknown member and located the house, but found out that the member didn`t live there anymore. J answered the door and let us in. He said that he has been studying a lot of churches and religiones for a long time, but says that he still hasn`t found the truth. We`ve taught him a few times and he likes it. He was really excited to pray to find out if this is true and he knows that he needs to be baptized. We gave him a baptismal date for the 7th of June but because he didn`t asist church yesterday, the date fell through. We`re going to visit him today though to see what happened. 

Well that`s all for this week. Sè que Jesucristo vive y ùnicamente mediante Èl podemos salvarnos. Hope you all have a great week. I love you all and stay safe. Hope to hear from you all soon. 

Èlder Gòmez

Amo ser misionero

Semana 39

Hi everyone! I hope you`re all doing great and had a great Mother`s Day! I really loved being able to skype my family and grandparent`s yesterday! :)

N has her baptism for this Friday!!! She had her interview yesterday and everything is all good to go. We are super excited for her. She`s had a lot of trials in her life, but she`s really come a long way and is super excited as well. All the members are supporting her and everyone is looking forward to her baptism. 

The Bishop and the members are really starting to trust in us a lot.  With the trust and support of the leaders the work should start progressing rapidly now. 

Well sorry for the short letter. Not too much happened this week. A lot of people went out of town for Mother`s Day. This week we`ve got a lot to do and there`s no time to rest. The Lord is Hastening His Work. Pray for missionary oportunities every day! Sè que Jesucristo vive y que la Iglesia es verdadera. Have a great week and hope to hear from you all soon. Love you all!

-Èlder Gòmez

Amo ser misionero

Semana 38

Hi everyone! How are you all doing? I hope you´ve had a great week! Things are going good here. 10 months in the mission!! The time has gone by super fast. Focus on the mission and don´t be trunky and it will go by fast!!

I finally got the hole in the shoe fixed. They replaced part of the soles on my shoes with soles made of car tires, so I´m assuming that that should hold up really well for the rest of my mission. haha 

Today we had a zone activity. We played soccer and a few of the companionships made food. I made churros again and everyone ate them so fast that they were gone before I knew it. haha I think I´m sunburnt too!

Well the work is progressing here in Chillogallo. Sadly, N didn´t come to church so won´t get baptized this Friday. We don´t know what happened to her. We´ve been calling and going to her house every day, but we haven´t seen her. We hope she´s okay. Even though we didn´t have success with investigators this week, we´re seeing a lot changes in the ward. For such a long time the bishopric and some of the leaders in the church haven´t had any trust in the missionaries. I think there were some disobedient missionaries here in the past so the bishopric  and leaders lost trust in the missionaries, up to the point where they would try to monitor the missionaries. But in these past two weeks they´ve changed! We did service for the 1st Counselor on Friday. We removed the tile on his house so he could paint it and then had a family home evening in his house that night. We´ve developed a close friendship with him. Then yesterday we finally got the Bishop´s trust! He told us that he trusts the missionaries a lot more and he wants to invite us and the other companionship in the ward to his house for dinner next week. So I think the work is going to start progressing a ton in these coming weeks. In order to have success in an area, you have to have unity with all of the members in the ward. If there´s contention problems then the work won´t progress. The missionaries have to work together with the members and leaders to hasten the Work of Salvation. 

On Saturday morning, we had a really cool meeting where some of the stake leaders talked to all of the missionaries in the zone. A member of the stake high council told us that we need to be talking to as many people as possible every day. He gave us a statistic that if we contact 20 people every day and if these contacts are effective, then we should have 1 new investigator every day and 7 every week. Then we should have 28 new investigators every month. Of those 28, at least 14 should progress, then 10 should have a baptismal date, and then of those 10, three should get baptzed. It made us all excited to start talking to as many people possible every day so that we can get to the point where we´re baptizing every week. The counselor of the stake presidency gave us some good advice too. He said that often the missionaries only work with their feet and hands, but that need to also work with their heart and mind. He also said that what he saw in his mission is that so often missionaries only work hard just so they can become leaders in the mission like assistants or so they can look good infront of the leaders. He said that´s something that we need to change. Our only motivation for working should come from our love for our Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the people that we teach. If we work with that attitude then we will have more success in the mission. We need to love these people. If we love them and truly care for them, they will recognize that love and the Spirit will be able to testify to them more easily that these things are true. It was a really good meeting and are things I really want to apply in my mission to be a more effective missionary. 

Well that all for this week. I know that Jesus Christ live. He is our Savior and He is always there for us in our times of trials. He´s always ready to help us, we just need to have faith in Him and accept His help. Hope you all have a great week and I can´t wait to hear from you all next week!!

-Élder Gómez