February 14, 2011

Weve been feeling a few temblors the past few days! I still havent felt a really strong one but its fun to feel the ground shake every once in awhile. Last Friday we were walking and a man stopped Elder Gil and I to tell us that there was a temblor. We stopped walking, looked up, and a sign with a steel pole was shaking back and froth! Everyone says it was a 7.0 in Concepcion so I guess it was a pretty strong one.

Something really funny and awesome happend last Thursday. I did a mini cambio and stayed in my sector with Elder Hafen, an Elder that works in a branch of 15 +/- assistance named Yungay. We were told to fill up the baptismal font in the church in the afternoon for a baptism for a lady that was coming from another mission to be baptized where her family lives. So, thats what we did because that was our only job! We taught an investigator while it was filling up and everything was going fine. Then, the whole family got there. The started asking me, ¨Where is the white tunic? Who is going to baptize her? Where is the councilor of the bishopric? Who is going to say the prayers and give the messages?¨ I was surprised because I thought that it all had been taken care of! Elder Hafen and I went into problem-solving mode and when it was all said and done, Elder Hafen conducted, we got a councilor of the bishopric to come, we got ahold of a tunic, I baptized Maria Paz, and it all worked out! The few times that I have baptized, its been amazing! I had met her an hour before baptizing her but its so amazing, when I have the opportunity to baptize, to see them come out of the water with a pure look in their eyes!

Something else happend that was really, really special this past week. Its a little more personal that emails in the past but I want to share it with yall. On wednesday (Im going backward in the week with my stories but oh well!) we had a lesson where the Spirit was felt really strong. We have an investigator that lives really close to a member that just left on his mission to Peru last month, so thats how we got things going with her since he was a wonderful example. She loves it when we teach her because she feels something ¨different¨, which is the Holy Ghost! We got the lessong going and we got to a point to where we had to tell her that her baptism wasnt valid from the church she was baptized in because they didnt have the authority to do it. It really hurt her and she started tearing up. She kept saying that she was a bad person and would not go to our church because she wasnt worthy. At one point she said, ¨Im not important¨ and rambled on. That stuck with me. The next time I spoke I declared to her that she IS important because she is a daughter of God. She kept shaking her head no and burst into tears again. My companion did a great job teaching, I tried to do my part, and the Spirit testified very strongly. In the end, we couldnt get a firm commitment out of her to go to chruch, but we did the best we could. The rest of the week we werent able to get ahold of her because of her work schedule. But, yesterday at church Elder Gil and I were greeting everyone at the door like we always do. I see her come up and say to me, ¨You didnt expect to see me here, did you? Here I am!¨ She came with her husband and two children and they were all dressed up nice in church dress and everything! It was their first time and they stayed all 3 hours at church and said they loved it! The Holy Ghost really is the key to everything in the mission work!

Thats it for the week! Love yall!

Elder Gregory