Week 50 - The week of the focus shift

This week, we went to work trying to apply everything we learned in our last Zone Council about the importance of talking with members to help us increase the attendance in church. We had a meeting with our Branch President on Tuesday and what we planned to do was have an activity one week and Branch Council the other week. That is perfectly fine by me because before we didn't have activities or Branch Council so I will take that step in the right direction. Then right before we left, President also gave us 3 references to work with during the week, so that was also quite awesome. 

We also planned a Basketball activity for Tuesday night so that we could get a little more movement going in the youth of the Branch, and luckily for us, one of the references from President, which happens to be his nephew, came to the activity and liked it a lot. He got to meet some of the guys from church and then this Sunday he came to church! He said he also like that too! We´re going to try and invite him to be baptized at some point this week. 

S. changed her baptismal date because she didn't feel super comfortable with the 15th, so we bumped it back to the 22nd, but we´re really hoping she can make it to that date. She didn't come to church yesterday though so we're going to pass by tomorrow to see what happened.

M. y Y. also didn't come to church; we've been having lots of trouble finding them home. 

One other cool thing that happened this week is that this less active member named L. has now come to church 3 times in a row. The really cool thing though is that he told us this week that when he got up to go to church the last Sunday, his girlfriend that he was living with told him that he had to choose church or her. Well, after having only gone back to church once, he told her "church", broke up with her, and went to church. He is now going to start working on preparing to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood which would be a serious help to the Branch and to us because he has a lot of time and could do visits with us. 

 

Well that's pretty much it for this week! Miracles are starting to happen here in Tranqueras! 

Nos vemos!

 

-Elder Martin

Bryant came out of his house one morning and there was just a horse 

randomly standing on a lawn across the street!

Bryant drinking mate (MAH-tay), a popular drink in some South American countries.

Personally, I think it tastes like grass boiled in hot water.  Blech!  ;)