Week 23 - The ALMOST Mission Goals week

First thing:

Mission Goal (Weekly): 5 baptismal dates, 3 church attendances, 7 new investigators.

What we Did: 5 baptismal dates, 2 attendances, 7 new investigators... So close...

But all in all, even though we didn't hit the mission goals (or rather "Achievements of Excellence" therefore being very difficult to achieve in reality) this was easily my best week of the mission, until this weekend when 2 of our baptismal dates are going to convert into actual baptisms!!!!

Michelle is going to get baptized this Saturday (Por fin!) (finally!) and I'm going to do the ordinance for that baptism. I'm still super stoked for that, and the other really awesome thing there is that 2 of the other people that we are teaching that have baptismal dates set are her sister and brother-in-law (yes actually married for once), John and Sai. Michelle has actually been helping us teach them which is super awesome. Que capos!

Marilyn is doing really good. Her baptism still hangs in the balance a little because if she smokes again before her baptism, ya fue (it's over), because the people need to live the Word of Wisdom for an entire week before their baptism, but for now she's doing really well. We also recently started teaching her older daughter Martina also and she is really capa. She loves to read, so we just gave her a Book of Mormon, and she has been reading and has already passed her Mom. Marilyn says that sometimes she'll watch Martina read then she'll stop, kind of look up like she's pondering something and then she'll keep reading for a second. Looks like the Book of Mormon is really working its magic. Can I just say, I love that Book!

Diego, who has a baptismal date for the 22nd of December wanted to progress slowly with his stopping to smoke, but one day when we called him at night to follow up with him on his smoking, he said he didn't smoke at all that day already and that he just isn't going to buy cigarettes anymore; he just really doesn't want to at all. So let's go Diego!!

This week we also had a service activity for Light the World as an entire zone. I wish I had more pictures, but this computer doesn't like my camera so I only have this one sent to me by President Olsen.  I'll try to send more later.

Finally this last Sunday was Stake Conference here in Flores and it was absolutely incredible. Elder Villar of the Seventy was there and he taught some really interesting things. I'm going to try to sum up some of the most important points because he talked for about 40 min. but he had some really powerful teachings in his talk.

He talked about a really cool contrast between the moment when Lot separated from Abraham (I think it was Abraham) and his group pitched their tents toward SODOM (or the world). Then he related it with the people of King Benjamin who pitched their tents toward THE TEMPLE and THE PROPHET. Then he talked about the question of God to Adam when he said "Where are you?" He then talked about "Where are we?" "Where are our tents facing? Personally and in our families, our homes."

He then talked about Christ and talked about how Coming to Christ is more than coming to church.  He doesn't say "Read about me, or Learn about me, he says Come, Follow Me" Now in order to follow his example we need to learn of him by reading about him, but the Gospel is about becoming something.

All in all, this week was just killer, and we are really going to put the effort in for this coming week (and possibly my last week in this area) to complete all of the "Achievements of Excellence." Let the miracles come, because in reality, that's all the work is.

Nos vemos!

-Elder Martin

Bryant's zone at their Light the World Service Activity