September 7, 2009

Hola family,
It’s been a great week. We spent a good part of the week preparing for the Zone Leaders council because we had nearly 2 hours to talk. We have a Zone Leaders council each month where all the Zone Leaders gather (usually in the mission office in the conference room) and my comp and I organize it. Elder Nash talked a lot about developing teaching skills as far as how to work with unity, using the scriptures asking good questions and teaching to the investigators needs. Chapter 10 of Preach my Gospel is the teaching skills chapter so we talked a lot about it and did lots of practices of different teaching situations and teaching skills.

Because we stayed here in Bogotá this week, we have had the chance to work a lot in this area lately and it has been going great. We had another great Sunday with 8 investigators in church and this week we had some great lessons.

One example is the Diaz family. We found them a few weeks ago and they came to church. They have really gained testimonies already. They had read the B of M every time we have left them and they have all (3) prayed to know if it was true. Each says they really feel something special when they do. We planned an awesome lesson (Elder Zari and I) for Thursday using the story of the iron rod to explain how their family could be happy by living the gospel. We taught them about the steps to baptism and I invited them to be baptized on the 26th. Haha it was so awesome, they didn’t even hesitate and the three of them all said "of course, what do we need to do?" We went back a few days later and they said there was a little problem that their son had his birthday and the whole family was coming so they wouldn’t be able to do it that day and asked if they could change the date... so now they will be baptized even earlier on the 19th :) They really are awesome people.

Another mom named Lily was left by her husband who took off with another lady and left her with the three kids. She spent like 8 years working day and night shifts to provide for the family and worked her way up in a local restaurant here. She is now the head chef over like 8 other chefs. She really is an amazing person and wants so much for her kids to have good lives. Her daughter who is 15, became pregnant at the age of 12 (they haven’t told us anything about the situation but you can tell it was very rough for the family) but Lily has done everything necessary to raise the baby. She is now a happy, healthy 2 year old. She also has a younger daughter named Bridget who is awesome. She takes her Book of Mormon to school and shows her little friends and tells them about the missionaries. She always runs up and gives us hugs when we get there. The other day she made us a card with little notes and pictures saying things like "thank you for teaching us about Jesus and helping my family" haha it was great. They have loved church the first few times and are making friends quickly with all the members.

We have another family of 2 named Noralva and Natalia who we found awhile ago with Elder Amador. They have now progressed and started going to church. This week we also invited them to be baptized the 26th and they said yes.
We also have an older man named Luis who we recently found. He loves the church and has already read to Alma. This week we invited him to be baptized on the 26th and he said yes. Also, the daughter of a recent convert in our ward wants to be baptized the 15th so after all is said and done we should have at least 7 people to be baptized this month. Please pray that it will all work out for these people.

It really is amazing how you grow to love the people and to see and watch a testimony grow from a desire for good in their lives or for their family. I really know that the Lord has his "elect" people that are prepared and ready to receive the gospel and he has led us to many of them lately.
Our house is a little stuffed with 5 of us there but it has been fun to have Elder Smith here and our area is going great so we are all very happy.

This week I won't have much time to proselyte in our area because I am heading to Bucaramanga to go on interchanges with the missionaries there and work with them until Friday. I am very excited about this. Well I don’t have much time but thanks for everything. Hope all is well with everyone and I will talk to ya next week. Love you all, Will