I’m trying not to fall into the trap of reading my emails before I write my letter this week… Well, it’s been hard lately because I’ve kind of felt like my area is dying, and technically I think it must be my fault because I’ve been here FOREVER so it’s my responsibility to work the area the right way… and we haven’t had any investigators in church for two weeks, and everyone we’ve been teaching… keeps dropping us.
That’s kindof a new thing for me. I usually drop investigators–not the other way around.
But seriously, I’ve never in my entire mission had so many people tell us, “You know what, thank you so much, but we’re going to go to another church.” Seriously? Like really? I almost have a hard time believing people because you know that they KNOW the truth sometimes–or at least they know that they will know if they put forth the effort to ask but they shrug it off because it’s easier not to make the effort…
Really?
I can’t believe it. The Magar, Perez, Sub, and Pop families all dropped us after a little while… I really can’t believe the Perez and Magar families because I know that they felt the spirit in our lessons and they don’t want to live the gospel for pure… laziness.
Also I’ve never all of the sudden had such a hard time finding new people–usually it takes me about and hour to find some news… but yesterday me and Sis Villatoro looked for news all day (8 hours) except for one lesson with Brother Sub in which he dropped us because he doesn’t want to trust the Lord and go to church instead of work.
But that’s ok, because their time will come and they will repent later I hope.
And the Lord blessed us with a wonderful new investigator who appeared at the church (doesn’t count as an attendance because she came at the end of Sacrament Meeting). Her name is Olga and she has two children: Didra and De’andre. She is the wife of a less-active member–and she came with her mother-in-law to church. I don’t think I’ve EVER taught anyone more positive than her.
When we were explaining the Book of Mormon, she asked me what happened to the gold plates–I was kind of afraid what she would say because of the face she made when I told her that the angel Moroni took them away… but then she said, “Oh yeah, that’s OK. I was just wondering.” She said that she had always wondered what had happened to the people here in the Americas when all the things were going on in Jerusalem and that she had asked God about it before. :0
Yeah, she’s really special. I really hope that we can get her a baptismal date for January… she’s still gotta get married though so we’ve gotta find her husband and find new people because no one went to church again last week (Olga was out of town for a wedding of course).
Thank you for all the letters the prayers and the support. I’m sure that we are going to see the blessings in the future… I was just thinking this must be a test for me because I’m ALWAYS telling people that the Lord will bless them–probably NOT immediately… but he will always bless them…
So …
maybe He’s not blessing us IMMEDIATELY… but we’ll trust the people are coming and we’ll find ’em…
Love,
Sister Holladay 🙂