Great Week

Angie and Ben Bates Family
August 3, 2009
Hola Familia,
This week has been exelente. We started off with a few days full of office work but we spent Thursday and Friday in interchanges with some of the missionaries in Bogotá and a little town about an hour outside called "Facatativa." Yes it’s very easy to say. But we worked hard and had good lessons, found new people and it was a good experience.

Elder Corro and I fasted for Ben this week. (our son in law who has just been diagnosed with cancer – he starts chemotherapy in 2 weeks that will continue about 6 months.) All we really can do is fast and pray, "Be of good cheer." I feel that everything will turn out fine. I also feel very calm about his situation. My prayers will be with Ben and Angie and the kids and the soon to be new baby. (This is a very frightening situation for our whole family (my eyes are sore from crying) but after fasting and many prayers, we all feel calm and have a certain peace with us. They have four little children and a new baby due Oct 1 so we will really need to rely on faith to get through these next few really stressful months. We are so grateful for the gospel and the peace that it brings as well as excellent doctors and modern chemotherapy)

Saturday we had a baptism in our area. She is a woman named Sandra. Her husband was born into the church but has been inactive most of his life. Things started going rough for the family so she decided it was time to turn to God. We started visiting her a while ago and she loved the message of the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation. She tried the promise in Moroni to read, meditate and pray to know if El libro de Mormon is true and she received her answer. We had the baptism well prepared so there were lots of members. Elder Corro, Sister Hacking and I also prepared a special number and sang the Saviors Love with the different voices and stuff. It was a great baptism service. On Sunday she was confirmed and it has also brought her husband back. It is the first time we have seen him in church with his white shirt and tie so we are very excited for them.

Also some more awesome news. When I was in Tierra Linda before, we found a young 12 year old boy named Julian. We started teaching him and he wanted to be baptized. He was baptized the week after I left to be an AP. His mom was very Catholic and let him be baptized but told us frankly that she was Catholic and that was that. But we convinced her to go to his baptism and she liked it. The missionaries then got her to go to church and bit by bit the seed of faith started to grow. Long story short, now 3 months later she and her four other children were baptized this last Saturday. I really was amazed and it is such a rewarding experience. From a little kid who we were able to find and prepare for baptism, a whole family has now found the Church. The missionaries say his cousins are now receiving the lessons. It really shows the worth of not giving up. The Lord blessed us and it is worth it a million times over. We also have some good investigators that have baptismal dates for this month in our area so things are going well there.

Today for pday we went to the Chapel as a district and played half an hour of Soccer and half an hour of BBall. Elder Amador was the only one who really knew anything about basketball so it was kind of a disaster but it was fun to get some exercise and have a basketball in my hands. After that the 6 of us went to our house and Ordered Dominos pizza for lunch. They had a special of 10 thousand pesos a pizza (5 BUCKS) so we ordered 4 and downed them. I know that’s a very nice spiritual experience(haha) but I was amazed at how cheap they were and even more amazing was that they were gone in about 10 minutes.

Today, we will have our weekly meeting with President Hacking. We have lots to talk about including the transfers this coming week, some missionary situations and more. Oh by the way, Elder Corro got his shirt and it is perfect he was very grateful.


Oh another cool experience, The other day we (Elder Amador and I) ended up in a lesson with a Pentecostal Lady who was like "Bible Guru know every scripture in the world to prove us wrong" We went in there with our scriptures and testimonies and taught and testified with clarity, every principle of the Restoration and literally left her silent. We gave her a Book of Mormon and she agreed to read and pray about it. It was awesome because we didn’t at any time fight or speak badly of anything she believed, we just shared and testified what we believed with the scriptures. Literally the Spirit worked through us to be able to teach her. As far as my knowledge of scriptures or ability to teach I know very little, but with the Lord anything is possible. I learn everyday and my understanding and testimony grow everyday.

Haha I am sorry if my letter is dramatic or corny but it was a great week and I really felt the spirit. I know what I am doing is right, I love ya mucho and my prayers are with you. Be of good cheer, we might as well. Love Elder B