Week 61 - The week where Repentance allows us to receive miracles

First things first, this new area is really beautiful! We live right next to the beach and the entire place is super green. It`s a much better off place, financially speaking; some of the houses here are absolutely insane!! 

 

Well this week has been absolutely full of miracles for Elder Niela and I. While on the bus from Rivera to Montevideo, I was reflecting a lot on my time in Rivera and everything that I had accomplished. I also started thinking about the opportunity I had while going to a new area to make some changes in my work. While contemplating on that I realized that while they were all little, there were a lot of little things that I could improve  to be much more dedicated and focused. I decided instead of just changing a couple things I basically just decided that I was going to do every single tiny detail in my daily life and it has already been giving some serious results!

I got to the area and asked Elder Niela how the work was going, and basically what I heard was, we have 1 person we are teaching, and that 4 of the 6 weeks of the last change they had come up with 0 new people to teach; but seeing as that is a very similar situation to all of the areas I've shown up to, I decided to not let that worry me and just do what I've always done and work. This week we found 7 new people to teach!

 

We started teaching la Familia D. this week. They were past investigators that we passed by for and they received us super well! They didn't want to come to church this week because it was a holiday, but said that next Sunday they would be there!

 

We found a less active family my first day in the area. We contacted M. who was preparing for her 15th birthday party. We set a visit for Saturday. We weren't expecting a whole lot but as it turns out, THEY ARE SUPER AWESOME! They don't go to church because both the parents work on Sundays, but the father, A., reads the scriptures every day without fail. Also, it just so happens that they have another daughter M. that is 9 years old that they want to be baptized. The Mom, V., is going to try to change her schedule a little bit to be able to go to the first hour of church with her daughters next week!

 

The one person that was already being taught when I got here came to church on Sunday! He is super friendly and super humble as well. He told us that he has already received an answer about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, but, he doesn't technically live in Colonia. He's living with a member for now, but he doesn't have a set place to live. He's trying to find a job so he can stay in Colonia because he wants to stay here, but we're not sure and our Branch President doesn't want him to get baptized until he's sure he´s going to stay in Colonia. We´ll have to see what happens there. His name is C. R.

 

The mission also has the goal to contact 20 people every day. We had an average of 24! It was the most crazy contacting I've done in my life! Good thing too! On Sunday we made it to 20 contacts and we still hadn't found any new person to teach. We decided we had to keep pushing at full speed to find that last new person to meet our weekly goal, and miraculously enough, contact #21, D, listened to us very attentively and seemed to be truly interested. 

 

I know the church is true and I know with 100% surety that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and serves as evidence of the Restoration. All that read it, study the message it contains, and pray to receive an answer of the truthfulness will receive it. The Lord is hastening his work!

I love you all! Nos vemos!

 

-Elder Martin

More farewell pics from Tranqueras