Dec 21, 2015

So this week was full of events and progress and Spanish.

First off we accomplished our Goal of 70 OYM's this week which was
great! Our goal next week is 100.

Isabel is our most solid investigator. We had a lesson with her on
Thursday this week and Hermano Sanchez (our Branch mission leader)
accompanied us. We enter the house, sit down, and Hermano Sanchez
starts talking and giving his conversion story which he always does.
Or that's what I thought. You see Hermano Sanchez and Isabel are the
two people I understand the least when it comes to their Spanish.
Sanchez because he talked so fast. Isabel because of her accent. So I
thought he was sharing his conversion story but wishing 5 minutes
Isabel was crying and I was freaking out because Sanchez is saying
something I don't understand and it's making Isabel cry. So I'm just
looking at my companion in horror waiting for him to explain what's
going on. He looks at me and says "everything's going great." Turns
out that Hermano Sanchez really got Isabel to open up and she said " I
used to turn the missionaries away because I'm Catholic but not that
things in my life are going terrible I need them in my life because
they're the only ones keeping me connected to God." So I guess the
lesson went well after all. We invited her to come to our Branch
Christmas party and she said yes and she's still on date for the 2nd
of January.

Marisa is a less active who we've been trying to meet with for a
while. On Wednesday I had exchanges. I was with Elder Schunk:

That guy and he doesn't speak any Spanish. This was also the day we met Marisa. I've met Marisa before but it's been about 2 months and I was just about to invite her to the Branch Christmas party when she started asking how my Spanish was going and if I had any investigators. At the time Isabel was our only investigator so I started talking about her. Now I usually don't divulge anything about my investigators to others but this time I decided to tell Marisa about the hard times Isabel was going through mostly because Marisa had to go through the same stuff in the last. So she better than anyone else knows what it's like. I told her that Isabel would be going to the Branch Christmas party and that I would like for them to meet. She agreed to go and said that she can't wait to meet Isabel. There's something about helping another person that can change you for the better. I'm hoping that by helping Isabel come to church that it will reactivate her as well. 

This brings us the the Branch Christmas party. We get there and Marisa is already there with one of her friends sitting just outside the gym near the front doors. I invited her to come inside the gym where the party was but she said that she wanted to wait for Isabel so they could sit together. Isabel comes and they meet. Everything was perfect. They stick together the entire night and when Marisa was leaving she old me thank you for inviting me and thank you for telling me about Isabel. She wouldn't have come to the dinner otherwise. Isabel also had a good time and next time we meet with Isabel we're going to start talking about the arrangements for her baptism. This is going to become a real thing now that the 2nd is only 12 days away. We're going to do everything we can to make sure she's ready. 

Now back to exchanges. Elder Schunk doesn't know any Spanish whatsoever. Luckily we didn't have any lessons scheduled that day but that didn't stop us from working. We were able to get 10 OYM's and we also did some tracting. One of the people we tracked into spoke Spanish. Not any English. So I started the basic "how to begin teaching" from Preach My Gospel and he invited us in. Usually they never invite us in. So at this point I was freaking out. He could tell that I didn't know Spanish well so he spoke slow using simple words which I really appreciated. The lesson actually went really well. It was the best lesson I've ever given. I taught that God is out loving Heavenly Father and that he answers prayers. I taught him how to pray and we prayed at the end. I asked if we could come again and he said that his work schedule is really unpredictable but if he's ever home then we should knock on the door and he will always let us in. We're usually around his area so we're probably going to see him again. 

We also found two new investigators named Arellano and Esperanza. We had a lesson with them the week before but a drunk Mexican named José Comacho came in uninvited and ruined the entire lesson. We were able to meet with them again without José being there and taught them the first lesson. They both accepted a baptism date on January 9th but we're still pretty skeptical. We've experienced many times where people will accept a date and act golden and then the next day tell us they're not interested and just drop us. So we didn't know what to think. 2 days later we met with Arellano and read chapter 1 of 1 Nephi with him. He doesn't read well so we gave him a CD with the first 23 chapters on it. Then he told us that he doesn't have a CD player. My companion then opened his bag and pulled out a CD player that he bought at DI for $3 and gave it to him. Then he told us he doesn't have headphones. My companion always has one of those mini speakers that you can buy at Walmart so I told my companion that if he gives Arellano the speakers that I would buy him new ones. So now I owe my companion $20. But it's all good. It's for the investigators!!! 

So yeah that was pretty much my week. Hope everyone is doing well. Merry Christmas 

Elder Austin