Ok well this week wasn’t as good as it could have been but it taught me a lot of new lessons. We spent all week teaching and preparing our 2 families for baptism. Our family, J y E are SOO close to baptism but when we showed up to have the interviews and finalize all the plans, they weren’t there... And just to top it off, they didn’t go to church either because J was working and E was too cold. So we have been visiting every single day trying to get them to be super pumped for the baptism and to finalize everything with them but it just hasn’t worked out the way we want it to be. Our other family, F y A are just not progressing. Every time we visit them, it seems that all we talk about is our lives and eat food, and then leave. And every time we try to start teaching a lesson, A is either asleep or super busy with her little kids and F is super worried about his little house and other little things. The picture attached is of their house. It’s super small and F is always worried that he will be robbed or something. So yesterday we went to the house of F y A an hour early before church so we could get them ready and to church on time. We got there and it took us 30 mins to talk them into going with is. Then they decided that they needed to eat so they started to cook breakfast for themselves and for us, even though we said we didn’t need anything. Breakfast took about 50 to cook and eat. So we are 20 mins late right then. Then they needed to actually get dressed in good clothes. Another 20 mins. Then they wanted me to take photos of their kids while they were all pretty. That took about 20 mins because F wanted everything to be as perfect as possible in these photos. And he refused to leave until they were done. Now we needed to get a Taxi because they live a little far away from the church and we were late.. So my companion walked down the road to get a Taxi and I stayed with the family to finish getting them ready. While my companion was down the street, F decided that he was going to work instead of going to church. He sells bread in the Bus Terminal. I tried all I could to get him to stay and go to church and then go sell bread after church but he refused to listen and walked away. And A said she didn’t want to go either because she was worried about the house. I talked to her and got her to walk with us to the church because my companion couldn’t get a Taxi for us. When we got halfway there, she wanted to wait for F because she had seen him around the corner. So we looked for him and couldn’t find him. By this time, we were 2 hours late for church. And when we told this to A she didn’t want to go anymore because she didn’t want to show up to nothing. Oh by the way, we had 6 people at church yesterday, not including us. So she decided to walk around and shop so we left her to go to what was left of church. Later that night, we went to visit them. When we showed up, F was trying to fix a toy car for his little girl. So we helped him with that for a bit and then started to talk to him about the Plan of Salvation. By this time, it was about 7pm and A was asleep already. So we talked to F about PreMortal life, how we existed as spirits and lived with God before we were born on the earth. He thought we were joking and refused to believe us for a while. After about 10 mins of talking about this, he was still a little hesitant to believe so we moved on to a different subject. Baptism. He was baptized into the Evangelico church about 3 or 4 years ago. We talked about the importance of baptism and how baptism is only valid through the right way and through the proper authority, the Priesthood. We talked about how other churches have good teachings and good intentions but they don’t have the authority of God. We cited scriptures from the BoM and from the Bible! After all of our efforts to ''persuade'' him, he still thought we were joking and was laughing throughout the entire conversation. We challenged him to ask God through prayer and to find out for himself if it was true since he didn’t want to believe us. We then left, feeling somewhat frustrated and sad. We have decided that if he doesn’t believe us and they aren’t progressing or don’t go to church by next Sunday night, we are going to tell them that we aren’t going to visit them anymore. This is really hard for missionaries to do but we can’t waste our time with families that only want to ''hang out'' with the missionaries and don’t want to listen to our message or work toward eternal life. There are other people that we could be visiting that actually want something of the gospel. Our success as missionaries is not measured by numbers but is measured by how hard we are working to spread His word to others. Even though people may reject our message and refuse to listen, we can still be successful missionaries as long as we tried our hardest to do His work. And that is how I go about doing the Lords work, working as hard as I can to let others know of His love for us and His gospel. I do this every day, all day and will continue to do it for as long as the Lord needs me. I love being here in Nicaragua, where I can experience something that will change my life but mostly to experience the change that the Gospel can make in the lives of His other children!!!!
¡¡¡¡¡Les Amo!!!!!
ELDER DAUGHERTY
No comments:
Post a Comment