I feel like I'm still pushing harder than the work in the area will move forward but I think we're seeing some progress (slowly). The biggest disappointments of the week were our investigators not coming to church again (even though they told us 2 hours before that they we're planning on coming)and one of our promising (recently found) investigators (Olaya) missed her appointment 2 weeks in a row along with 12,384,762 or so other lessons that fell through. I feel like I really have to learn patience. The missionary work in this branch (both for the Elders' area and our area) has been pretty stagnate for a while now. I want the work to move forward so badly that every little disappointment seems magnified like x10...and missionary disappointments are pretty painful. So I decided I need to work on being more patient.
Sunday was a good day. Church was really good again! There were a little more than 40 people there in sacrament meeting which was awesome. After church all of our appointments fell through but we were able to find some new investigators though our finding efforts. One, named Marisol, we found while knocking doors and she just let us in. We taught her the restoration and the spirit was really strong. She was really interested by what we shared and we set an appointment to come back! The other new investigator (Salvador) was the husband of another investigator (Rosa) who we hadn't been able to have an appointment with in over a month. We stopped by to see if she was home and she was! We had a lesson with them where Rosa expressed both her testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon (awesome) and then why she didn't think she actually needed to get baptized because it doesn't matter what church you go to (not so awesome). We think she's trying to justify it in her mind because she's received some pretty harsh opposition from her family in Mexico (i.e. her mom said it would kill her faster if she left the catholic church). After explaining authority and trying very hard to follow the spirit to say the right thing they agreed to pray about it. So hopefully they can find the confidence that they need to move forward with this.
We've seen some miracles already this week as well! On Monday all of 4 of our appointments fell through (again), but we were able to find 6 new investigators! We found one family knocking doors and they just let us in! We taught the first lesson and felt the spirit really strong. One of the greatest things about the lesson was that both the husband and the wife seemed equally interested and open to the spirit which doesn't happen a lot - they also said they would get baptized once they know these things are true. They gladly accepted the invitation to read and pray and told us we were welcome to come back again the next week. Later that night we stopped by one of the appointments that had fallen through earlier that day and found them at home! They had listened to the missionaries before but had been dropped a while back. The wife, Imelda, said she liked what the missionaries taught them but that she would always get confused because it wasn't always exactly the same as what the catholic church taught. We talked about prayer and read Moroni 10: 3-5. We asked her what she understood from those verses and she said "Well I guess if you have a question you should ask God and he'll answer you". The spirit was really talking to her! We asked if she would be baptized once she gets her answer and she said "well, yes". So all in all it was a pretty awesome day. I feel like I'm getting better at following the Spirit in lessons which is awesome. It's an interesting feeling walking out of a lesson that ended well and not even knowing how you we're able to resolve those particular doubts or how you came up with the things you said and then knowing that it's really the Spirit that does all the work.
Yesterday was pretty good too, though 2 of our appointments fell through (I still can't figure out why there's such a problem with that right now). We stopped by a less active family (Familia Aguilar) as a back up plan and they let us in. They haven't been to church in years I think (their 12 year old daughter hasn't been baptized). It's kind of interesting because Hna. Aguilar is the daughter of Hna. Montelongo from my last area. I also knew/met all of her siblings because they also live in Carpentersville. Its interesting because for some reason I think me knowing her family has made her more open to us (Hna. Delis said she'd always been kind of evasive of lessons). We we're able to share a scripture with her and her daughter Bianca about Christ. Afterwards Hna. Aguilar brought up her doubts about the importance of church without us even asking her. We both bore our testimonies about church and the importance of the sacrament and it ended with her saying they would try to come to church this Sunday. So hopefully they do and she wasn't just saying that just to say that. Bianca also asked some really good questions about baptism so hopefully she can motivate her family to come back to church.
Well I hope that you all have a great week! Sometimes I think you forget to tell us certain things because you talk about them like we already know haha. So apparently you're going to Virginia again? That sounds fun - for how long? and Apparently Parker is going on a mission. That's awesome he'll do great!
I love you all and thanks for your support!
Hermana West
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