Hi everyone!
This week I decided that I'm never getting married. Or at least, if I were to get married, my fiancé/future mother in law would be in charge of all of the wedding plans. This week was a disaster. I was more tired than ever, and we taught comparatively few lessons. Every day there seemed to be something that was going to prevent the wedding. It was really stressful, but we endured and the Montiel family got married on Friday baptized on Saturday, and confirmed yesterday. Whew.
As if that weren't enough, the one-year-old daughter of a part member family that we're teaching drank bleach-water last Sunday and spent the entire week in and out of he hospital. Her mom was incredibly scared, and asked us to give her a blessing. We ended up passing by the house like every day during the week to help out. The little girl is really affectionate and it's so hard to see her like that.
To top it all off, in an extreme family home makeover moment, the Gonzalez family started getting he bricks that they needed to add on to their house. Two years or so ago, the house of the Gonzalez family burned down. They lost what little they had. Then, in a fight with their neighbors, someone called Social Services, who deemed that the parents could not provide for their five children. The kids went to government homes. Slowly but surely, the Gonzalez family is trying to add on to their one-room house so that it can be called adequate for the return of their children. Unfortunately, the homes where the children live have given them the deadline of December to do so or the children will be offered up for adoption.
We're trying to help them out so they can make the deadline, but of course we're limited in what we can do.
We're having a lot of success, but most of my days are spent thinking about how to teach better and a lot of other stuff that I'm not really sure I know how to share.
One thing I can say is this: lots of people, especially misionaries, want to be guided by the Spirit in what they say. To do this they try very hard to study out in their minds what they are going to say and then deliver the best sermon they can. When this is our focus, we are far from teaching by the Spirit. In order to teach someone by the Spirit, we have to be more focused on them than on our own lesson. As we listen carefully and sincerely to what they have to say, the Spirit allows us to discern their needs and then we can teach simply and without embelishment what the Spirit tells us they need to hear. Christ was so good at this that he could discern the thoughts of the people.
We've learned a lot about listening to our investigators lately, and had very spiritual experiences with them because of what we're putting in practice. Hopefully I'll be a much better listener when I get home.
Thanks for paying attention to my emails and for your prayers. I certainly felt the extra help this week with the Montiel family. I love you guys.
