Week #13 - Granados

This week felt pretty long, but we had so many miracles and so much success!!! 

Hermana Cahuapaza and worked really hard this week to master our area. Granados is pretty large, so we did a ton of walking in the heat this week which was difficult, but super worth it. It´s been a little difficult for me remembering street names and where people live exactly because it´s so different from the US. At times it´s pretty unorganized and we have incorrect addresses. So Hermana Cahuapaza has been quizzing me a ton this week to remember. She´s absolutley hilarious, which has helped us relieve stress and have fun too. In the process of this, we´ve been able to gain 19 new investigators, the majority being teenagers, which is super awesome!

We experienced a lot of miracles this week. On Monday night, we lost the map that Hna. Cahaupaza was using to mark the street names as we were walking. So we decided to trace back our steps to find it. We never ended up finding it, but we ended up running into a man who came up to us and just started talking to us about how he had met Elders before, and wanted them to visit, but they never did. He told us how he had seen his friends and others be completely changed by the church, and that he wanted the same for himself. Sadly, he´s not in our area, but we were able to write down his info to pass it on to the other missionaries in his area. If we hadn´t lost the map, we wouldn´t have ran into him! When we´re super busy and successful here in the mission, we´re super happy and have smiles on our faces, no matter the temperature or how long we´ve been walking. 

This whole week we talked with people in parks, families in the streets, people working in their little shops, and took advantage of opportunities to teach short lessons with people. Hermana Cahuapaza is a great example to me of talking with everyone and has helped me take opportunities to go out of my comfort zone and talk with everyone and even lead out the lessons. This next week, we´re striving to visit the rest of the members we haven't visited to get to know them and gain their trust, and also to increase our communication with our investigators to prevent appointments from falling through because they forget. 

We met up with Estrella this week who is 11 year old, and we´re super excited to announce that she is getting baptized this week on Friday!! I´m beyond excited to be able to witness, for the first time, one of my investigators get baptized. She started out super quiet and timid, but I have seen her change over the course of this month becasue of the gospel, and she´s a lot more smiley, happy and lively!

We also met up with our investigators, Talia and Betty this week. Talia is 19 and the daughter of Betty, who isn´t married but lives with her novio. Betty has another daughter who is a member and also a return missionary as of only a few months ago. Talia a few weeks ago, had a baptism date planned, but when my other companion and I went to visit her, she had decided she didn't want to be baptized anymore. I think she had a really rough day that day. Satan had been working really hard to make her feel discouraged, because when we visited her this week, she was completely different, and we even extended another invitation to her to be baptized in February, and she said yes! We also set a date for her mom, Betty, to have her wedding in February! We´re going to do all we can to help them prepare and to stay strong these next few weeks.

On Friday, we had the chance to watch the broadcast of the funeral of our beloved Prophet, Thomas S. Monson in the Florencia Stake Center. He truly was an amazing prophet and always looked for oppotunities to serve others and place others first. I´ve always loved his quote: ¨¨Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved´¨. This is so true. When we place other´s needs first, we don´t have time to feel sorry for ourselves with all the struggles we´re going through. We're so much happier and can see the good every day when we seek for opportunities to serve as Christ did.

This year church starts at 2pm, and this Sunday we gave our talks in Sacrament meeting as always, every 6 weeks, when there are cambios...and they went super well. We had our ward council meeting too. I´m really striving to participate, even with my broken Spanish, and gain the confidence and trust of our ward council so they will want to help accompany us in our appointments and also have a desire to share the gospel with others. I have felt at times that my personality in Spanish doesn´t really reflect my true personality in English, but I  know with time this will come. I've just got to pray to have the Spirit and the gift of tongues to help me so that I can be that same person and leader that I´ve been int he past.

I hope you all have a wonderful week!!

-- 

Hermana Doney