1/3 mark

This coming week marks 1/3 through my mission! Time is flyingggggg

This week I learned something really important. Actually it was taught to us in the mtc, but I really just remembered it this week. An elder in the mtc said one time "we can't measure our success or work based on the agency of other people". Basically just saying that we can work hard and do all we can to help people receive the gospel, but in the end they can make their own choices. We can't get down on ourselves because people reject us, just keep working.

This week was soooooo hard. On Tuesday in the district meeting we set the goal for each companionship to have 14 lessons with a member present. We were pumped to get out and work and try to reach the goal. We had lots of appointments and people to talk to.  But when the time came, the members weren't available and had to cancel, or the investigators weren't there. So this week turned into a lot of contacting, just like every other week.

But because we can't let people's agency affect us, we continued onward and set baptismal dates. We contacted a house close to the beach on Thursday and the guy that came out is 95. But he still moves around a lot and talks pretty clear. So we taught him and showed him the Book of Mormon and he was super interested. When we asked him if he wants to be baptized and clean of all his sins and his past, he said "I really do want to, but I don't think that there's enough time left on the clock for me".

I really want to baptize this old man. He has such a strong desire to follow Christ and change his life even at this point, he deserves all the work we can do to get him baptized. So we'll see how it goes with him. We have to call his niece to get approval to bring him to church and stuff, but it would be awesome to help this man reach the goal of baptism.

One of our other baptismal dates is the son of the bishop. He's met with the missionaries tons of times but always avoided the commitment. But now he really trusts me and Elder Suero and Hermano Torres, and wants to be baptized. He just never did because of the pressure from his dad. He knows the church is true and is now acting for himself. It's really cool to talk with him because he knows everything about the church and literally the bible cover to cover. He'll make a really strong member. All of our baptismal dates are for the 5th of Marzo because we're having a bauti-zona, where the zona sets tons of baptismal dates and really pushes for the one day to baptize a ton of people. It'll be cool in Vega Baja because the sisters have 14 baptismal dates and we have 3 and the other elders have 3. It'll be a party in the church.

Ummmmm but yeah that's about it for this week, I don't think we really did much more. Not that I can remember.

Oh and we're beginning to teach the boyfriend of Angelica (from the Rivera family) and church was kinda nuts, mostly the Gospel Principles class with people talking all kinds of weird stuff. Me and Samuel (the boyfriend) just laughed through the whole class.

OH BEST PART OF THE WEEK we went contacting in one of the more poor parts of Vega Baja with Marcelino, he's a recent convert who lives in the area and is kinda crazy. Suero and I were walking ahead and saw a drug deal going on so we kept walking, but Marcelino stopped and contacted these guys! He said, "hey can we give you a card?" (With a pic of Jesus Christ). And these big guys said no and I thought that they were gonna shoot at us or something. Then Marcelino says "okay when you're ready, let me know!" Hahahaha the guy's nuts haha

But yeah that was the week. Not a whole ton going on. But anyways, love you all!

Elder Nelson