Good morning everyone back home!!!! This week has been such an incredible week! But it did not start off incredible by any means, ha-ha. It was quite the opposite of that. Visits were falling through, things were going well, and we were struggling in the work. As missionaries we set goals every month, every week, and every day actually. And we strive to achieve those goals throughout the day and week and month. Well, we weren't accomplishing our goals this past week. We were a little frustrated because we know that as we set these goals and work hard to achieve them, the Lord helps us. So Thursday night and Friday morning we prayed and told Heavenly Father that we were doing our part and we were going to continue doing our part and continue to be exactly obedient, work diligently, and go forward with faith. But we told him that we needed His help a lot if we were to achieve these goals. And you know what? He did His part! He blessed us with so many incredible miracles and blessings that our prayers were pretty much nothing but thanks Sunday night. We achieved all of our goals when just two days before we didn't think we were even going to come close. And we reached them and even surpassed some of them. It has helped me to realize, once again, that when we set righteous goals and work and do our part to bring to pass the salvation of God's children, He will help us in this work.
This week one of the best visits ever happened. This man, Walter is the husband of a member lady and he's not a member. We've been working with him ever since I got here and apparently the other Elders before me have been meeting before that too. He's been invited to be baptized so that he and his family can start this path together and someday be sealed as an eternal family but he's repeatedly said no. But I can testify that the visit we had with him was guided by the Holy Ghost. I felt it's presence in that visit stronger than in many other visits I've had on my mission and I know that he, his wife, and his kids felt it as well. The words I said did not come from me. I felt that the words were given to me and I didn't have to think about what to say. I had filled out a survey about missionary work for all the mission and one of the questions in it was about how often I act upon impressions from the spirit in lessons and unfortunately, I couldn't answer "always". And that question popped into my mind during that visit. And immediately after the question popped into my mind, a thought came to change the lesson completely from what we were currently teaching. And so I decided to follow it. And what followed was an outpouring of the Spirit and this man who had previously denied to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized to start a new life and to accept Christ as his Savior said that he would prepare to be baptized on November 12! It was an incredible experience that I'll never forget because I was not the one teaching and neither was my companion. The Spirit of God was the one speaking and we were merely instruments through which he worked.
The rest of the week was great too though. On a less "spiritual" note, the diet that we did this past week is now over and I'm back to eating normal :) ha-ha. Oh how I missed normal food! I do eat less and healthier actually which is my plan for the rest of my mission. This past week I lost two kilos which is about four pounds, ha-ha. Crazy huh!! But I still feel and look the same. At least I think so. But I'm not that worried about that anymore. I'll worry about it when I get home, ha-ha. I also got a little sick this past week. I've had a sore throat for about two weeks now and an annoying cough that drives me nuts at night because it wakes me up. But other than that I feel great! I still go out and work and everything and I think it's actually starting to go away....hopefully, ha-ha.
Oh! Funny story, ha-ha. Last night we had a visit in another town and we had to take a train to get there in time. Well, we missed the first train because our visit before that went too long. So we called and pushed back the visit an hour and caught a train to one town and switched trains to get to the town we wanted. Butttttt the only problem is that we got on the wrong train, ha-ha-ha. So we went to a completely different part of our area, had to ask where we were, cancel the visit, buy another ticket, and just go back home for the night, ha-ha. Talk about a crazy little train ride. And that's never happened to me! I never get on the wrong train! lol. I'm not sure what happened but now we know that we should double check before just getting on :)
Well, that's about it for me this week. It was fantastic and full of incredible memories. I love you all and pray for you all every day. Take care and I hope that things go fantastic this week!
