3 February 2014

Family!

When I first started here as a missionary, I never wanted to drop investigators. I held onto a desperate hope that they would all progress. (And I didn't like facing the challenge of finding new people who wanted to listen to us.)  But with time, I learned that sometimes you just need to move on, and I developed a sense of when it's time to leave investigators alone or just check in on them once a week. But in the last few weeks I have had a new experience. Instead of us dropping investigators, the investigators are dropping us! And I am not just talking about people who hide when we go to a follow up appointment after an initial lesson--that's normal. I am talking about progressing, promising investigators. A week ago Saturday, someone who had accepted the invitation to be baptized told us that she was going to go back to her old church (her pastor had come to talk to her). That was a little bit of a blow after she had related her feelings about the first time going to church with us--how she felt a strong sense of love from the moment she entered. But that is nothing compared to Silvia. Silvia is basically our Grandma. We were progressing steadily with her. She was reading and retaining the Book of Mormon. She was praying for the strength to proceed toward baptism. But Monday, she told us she didn't want to waste our time anymore. Someone had told her that she was just wasting our time because she never accepted the invitation to make covenants. So she decided to drop us. Later we found out that her frustrated granddaughter (member) had made a comment to that effect with the intention to push her Grandma to action. But the attempt backfired. I don't fault the granddaughter. She, perhaps more than anyone, wants her grandma to go to church. We gave Grandma Silvia some space for about a week and then went Saturday for a purely social call. It was evident that she had missed us. She started talking from the moment we entered the house. We are going to wait several more days, and then maybe--just maybe--we will be able to go a share a message.

Friday and Saturday the ward hosted an activity to raise money so that one of our investigators could get married. This Hermano has a lot a family who are already members. So Friday the family made 200 tamales. (I got to help make the maza, batter, sifting and mixing the ground corn.) I was also going to help wrap the tamales, but Hna Manuel is an expert and can judge just how much of each ingredient to add so that we could get the 200 tamales. So she wrapped all of them while the rest of us helped where we could with other side tasks. On an interesting note, Brother Galo told me that he knew Hna Manuel when he was in Progreso.

Sunday we had 214 people in Sacrament meeting. A new record. Obviously we don't have that many people every week. But I really like to see the Sundays where lots of people come. We've definitely seen this ward grow in the past 3 months. Some of it has been baptisms, but most of it has been reactivation. The mission is really focusing on bringing people back, and I love it. Our mission theme for 2014 is ''traerlos nuevamente a Cristo'' or ''bringing them again unto thee in Christ'' (Alma 31:34). It applies equally to everyone.

I hope you have a wonderful week. I love you all so very much!

Hermana Davis