Week 11 - 5 weeks in Uruguay

Alright so this week was a very successful week with lots of room for improvement, if that makes sense.

This week we had our first lesson with an antigua investigadora (old investigator) named Patricia. She seemed to understand very well what we were teaching and she is fairly interested in learning more. She had a big birthday party for a grandkid yesterday, so she didn't come to church, but we're hoping that she will attend this week.

We have now had 3 more lessons with Michelle, one of which was just to help her with English, and I gave her an English Book of Mormon that I had and we taught about the gift of tongues. Kind of an interesting way to encourage her to read the Book of Mormon, but we hope it's going to work. She understands everything we teach so well. She even remembered the names of the Kingdoms of Glory when we reviewed the Plan of Salvation, and that never happens! She also is now our only person with a baptismal date for Oct. 6. We really think she'll be ready for it, she's learning so well, we just need to secure a friend for her and ya fue (there ya go!).

On Tuesday we did this thing that we call opening the chapel. We literally just stood outside the chapel for 2 hours with a table with cards, pamphlets, Book of Mormons, and just let the people come to us. We got some really good contacts, and doing this we contacted Rosa. Just 2 months ago her only son committed suicide, and she has been really struggling with this, so rather than teach the Restoration first lesson like normal, we just jumped to Plan of Salvation. She really liked it and said that it made a lot of sense and that she would like to keep meeting with us. The great thing is that she already reads the Bible every day, so it will be really easy to encourage her to add the Book of Mormon to her study, because she won't have to create a new habit entirely.

Finally we had another lesson with Carmen, just a lesson on Mosiah 13 and all the commandments real quick. She really doesn't have a single problem with any of the commandments, but she is scared of restrictions, and therefore still doesn't want to be baptized. We're going to keep trying and hoping, but we shall see. It may take a long time to prepare her for baptism.

Well, we had lots of other charlas (discussions) this week with some newer investigators like Alvaro, Ernesto y Ana, John y Sai, Amelia y Juan (with their 6 kids), and Arquimides y Gisela. This week we actually had way more people open the door and let us teach them than normal which was awesome, but I feel like we kind of dropped the ball this week on contacting and finding, we only ended up with 2 new investigators this week, which is a mission low, and this is right after having my mission high, so... I definitely need to learn how to balance the teaching and the finding. We'll see what I come up with for this week. 

(And again no investigators at church...)

Well, we're still going to keep working on that last part, its just a matter of time and hard work. "Alto amor, altas expectativas." (Lots of love, lots of expectations)

Nos vemos

-Elder Martin