This week we have 3 investigators that have baptismal dates.
Maxen is still aiming for the 28/4 (Hopefully I’m still here since cambios are the 24th) He came to church for the third time on Sunday. We taught him the law of chastity on Saturday and since he doesn’t speak Spanish super well we asked him to type out what he understood the law of chastity to be in Creole in google and we translated it to English. Sadly it seems that either he understood really badly or Google did not translate well. (I think and hope it’s the latter) :b We asked him 2 times with an extra explanation in between. The first time the translator said something like, We shouldn’t harm/ harmful without sexual intercourse. Then the second time it said something like We know we’re in a Godly manner when it’s cool to do bad things… (Doesn’t make a lot of sense so we’ll have to see.) We ended up teaching him again on Saturday using a video made for the youth about limits and the law of chastity and some scriptures in creole and we finished with the word of wisdom. He committed to living both laws, but we’ll be reviewing with a haitian member from another ward that speaks spanish well so he can act as translator and help make sure Maxen understands.
Our second investigator with a baptismal date is Alvaro for the 19/5 so he’s the boyfriend of a less active member who’s super great. Her only issue is that she isn’t super great about getting to church and she’s married to another guy and living with Alvaro (She’s in the divorce process which is super slow in Chile). But we’ve taught all of the basic lessons and we’re getting into the commandments and we already knew that he wanted to get baptised. So we started with the law of Chastity. It honestly went really well. He liked everything we said and the spirit was there. He said that he would live the law of chastity, so then we explained that in order to be baptised he’d need to stop living with Daniela or get married to her. She was present and right away she said “OK you’re moving out Alvaro.” It wasn’t in a harsh way it was more of a well I want to support and love you and you need to get baptised and live the commandments and be happy so let’s do this right. 🙂 Pretty amazing! So he’s looking for an apartment.
Our third investigator is Javiera for the 12/5. She’s 19 years old and really cool. Sadly she is also living with her boyfriend who’s a less active member. But she’s super smart and wants to learn the truth so we’re working hard to help her have the spiritual experiences that she needs to continue progressing. We’ll have to see cuz she’s only got about 3 weeks to move out or get married and come to church every single week. We’ll have to see what happens. :b
So, as you all know missionaries often talk about the progress of the investigators that they’re teaching and everything that they’re trying to teach to them. I’ve gotta say there’s a whole lot of progressing by a missionary if they’re really trying to do the work. Honestly I am trying to do the work. I don’t know that I’m doing it well but I have been progressing. My testimony I think has increased about 50 times in size and it’s still tiny, but I’m gonna keep working on it. 🙂 I have had to learn the importance of patience and humility and little by little in the last couple of cambios I’ve been working on diligence and confidence. (I’m not sure if confidence is the word I’m looking for.) It’s kind of interesting cuz I’ve realized that if we don’t have confidence in ourselves and even more importantly in God and our ability to follow him then it doesn’t help hardly at all to be humble. When we’re humble we accept God’s will without complaint and continue forward with faith. That’s where the confidence comes in. We need that confidence that if we follow God and what he teaches and are diligent in applying what he teaches us that we’ll be able to change and improve. So never lose the confidence that he can really make up that difference.
