Another great week has come and gone! We had so many great things going on this past week and I can't go a day without realizing just how little I do and just how much the Lord does in this great work. This past weekend, one of our investigators, Meybely, was baptized!! :) She was truly a miracle. I'm just going to recount a little bit about how we met her and her story. In the beginning of January, Elder Watkins and I were doing great and we had high hopes for a lot of people who we were teaching. But as the month went on things just stopped going as well. People stopped progressing as much, it was harder to meet with them, and then people who had plans to get baptized just all of a sudden didn't want to. So it was really frustrating and we were stuck. We began to work extra hard to find more of the prepared children of the Lord to help them to come to the Gospel and we set some great goals and some really good plans. We made goals to talk to more people on the streets, ask for more references, and to make sure that we were doing all that we could in our power to find people. In the end, we didn't end up teaching a single one of the contacts that we did. And we had to have done a few hundred that first week! But the Lord saw that we were really working to find people and that we were being the servants that he needs and so he blessed us in other incredible ways!:) One of those ways was through a member named Alberto. He's in the bishopric here in our ward and one day he came up to us and said, "Elders, my niece is coming from Nicaragua next week. She's been to church quite a bit and already listened to the missionaries once and she's going to be baptized here. So when she gets here we'll set up a time for you to come." We could hardly believe what we heard! There we were, in church after a week of hard work, frustrated because of the lack of success we had been having, and the Lord blessed us with someone!:) She arrived and we went over the next day and she was absolutely incredible! Everything we taught, she already knew. We would ask her questions and she would give answers as if she had been a member for her whole life! All we had to do was give her the information and that's it! She was truly prepared by the Lord before coming to Spain and Heavenly Father blessed us because of our efforts to be a part of this young woman's experience with the church. It truly is a miracle and it truly was a reward for what we have been doing.:) So basically what I learned from all that, and I've learned it more than once, ha-ha, is that even though things may seem hard and impossible at times and we don't understand why something is happening, many times the Lord is waiting to see what we'll do. Are we going to just throw our hands up in the air and say, "Why me? Why this?" or are we going to set goals and make plans to continue forward? I know that as we choose the second answer that life just goes better. Everyone knows life isn't easy. But the real test is what we choose to do when the hard parts actually come. Don't get discouraged; keep moving forward; and let the Lord pour out his blessings that he has waiting for you because I know He will :)
I love you all and I'm excited for another great week. We have another person, Camila, preparing to get baptized this week as well so I'll have her story coming up next week, ha-ha. Stay healthy and safe and see ya next week!
