Week 13 - Week 1 (of this change, I don't like to think I already have 7 weeks)

Alright, so I washed 500 pesos in our washing machine this week. With how expensive Montevideo is, that is not a good thing... but somehow it stayed intact and was just a little wet and still usable, so that was a small but important miracle for this week. 

So because we are at a time where we can start giving baptismal dates for October, we set our baptismal goal for all of October for 3 baptisms. It's going to make us stretch, but at the same time we have names for who we think can arrive at that, so vamos a ver and vamos arriba! (we will see and we'll move forward)

Now an adapted quote from Sponge Bob said by Elder Hernandez.

Orar por la meta             (pray for the goal)

Estudiar por la meta       (study for the goal) 

Ayunar por la meta         (fast for the goal)

Trabajar por la meta       (work for the goal)

Comer por la meta          (eat for the goal)

Dormir por la meta          (sleep for the goal)  

Ser la meta                      (be the goal)  

We found a man named Pablo this week. He's been super receptive to everything that we've said and he already has a baptismal date for Oct. 27th. He's a little shy about going to church because he doesn't like large groups of people, so we're going to work with him on that, but we have lots of faith in him that he'll be able to get over his shyness. We were actually looking for someone else that we had the wrong address for, but he came out and we contacted him in that way, so that is why you contact whoever happens to leave their house, even if they weren't who you were looking for.

We FINALLY had a person we are teaching in the church yesterday, BUT we had never seen her beforehand. She just showed up, but we'll take whatever we can get. Her name is Maria, she's a little older, I want to say like 60, but she got along really well with one of the members we brought to Gospel Principles. We looked for a while after church for her house but there are literally 6 houses with the same address.... so.... maybe we just keep trying all of them until she finally comes out, or hope she comes to church again, but nonetheless, we have really high hopes that she can get baptized if she decides to just come to church of her own accord.

We also taught a little bit to Lazaro's Grandma, Miriam, this week. They didn't attend church at all this week like they committed to, but we'll continue to look for them, because we already know that Lazaro wants to go back, it's just a matter of getting the rest of his family to go.

We also found a man named Fabian this week who had lessons with missionaries 10 years ago. We're excited for this second opportunity that we have to teach him now, and maybe we can get him baptized this time, we shall see.

We also contacted a family of 7 right next door to Mariela and Jonathan that were super nice and we have a lot of hope for. They were the biggest miracle this week honestly. Picture proof to come, but there was a hailstorm that would've split skulls if we had been outside for it. I have never seen hail like this before! Elder Hernandez and I, right as the "rain" storm started made a decision that we were going to keep walking for the furthest part of our area from our house, despite the storm that we had no umbrellas for. The storm started and we kept going. The wind picked up, literally enough to make it hard to walk forward, and we kept going. The rain started to sting when it hit, just a little, and we kept going. The hail started, and we kept going. The hail got bigger, and we kept going. Eventually we hid under something as the bigger, actually dangerous hailstones started to drop that could've done some serious damage. We prayed that we would be able to continue the work without much delay, and about 5 minutes after that, the sun came out. We kept going and contacted that family. If they weren't meant to hear the Gospel, I don't know for what purpose we were supposed to suffer that storm.

Well that's pretty much all for this week. We did have a large number of lessons this week and lots of great progression from a lot of our people that we are teaching currently, but this email is already fat enough for my liking. As we get some more solid progress from them, ya'll will know!

Nos vemos

Elder Martin

Elder Martin is completely soaked!

What the hail ???????

"It wasn't just one freak piece of hail.  There were a lot that size..."