¡Buenos Días!
Entonces [Then], this week wasn´t anything too exciting and all but it´s
been a little hard to teach everyone that we´re planning on baptizing
because of all of the parties and festivals and programs and everything
else in the world for the 6 of August. It´s the Bolivian Independence
Day and the world (or Bolivia at least) goes crazy. Especially tomorrow
when all of the Brazilians cross over to get drunk. Yup, our area
supposedly is the worst because we´re right where all the clubs are, but
ya, it´ll be interesting haha. Other than that the week's been pretty
good. We´ve found some really cool families to teach and Hermano W,
the soldier from La Paz, is excited for his baptism, but he´s going to
wait another week because this week is really hard for him with all of
the stuff going on for the 6th. And the family that we´ve been teaching
for awhile now is slowly getting better and better and we´re still
teaching them because they´re coming to church and the mom was crying in
our lesson last night because she wants this so bad, but it´s just the
dad that´s still having a hard time. But ah! This family! The changes
that we´ve seen in them are amazing!
Church yesterday was good and there was still lots of people! We
had a couple more less actives come, including one hermana that hasn´t
come for years and always says that she will but then never does. But
she actually came yesterday! And it´s just really cool to see the
progress in this branch in just one month. The last fast and testimony
meeting was the Sunday that we only had 10 people or so, and yesterday
we were at least 61 people again, but I don´t know the exact number. But
I´m so blessed to be here in this branch right now. They´ve really
changed my perspective on what the church really is, helping everyone on
every level.
When Presidente Zambrano was still here, Elder L and I
were talking to him about our situation here and he told us that to
build the Kingdom of God, we have to do 5 things, and all of them at the
same time: Reactivate the inactives, baptize new converts, family
history work and temples, prayer and fasting, and teach the gospel. When
we do these things all at the same time, everything works out. This is
what he told us when we told him our plan to focus on the less actives
only and put off the baptisms. He explained to us that it can´t work
that way and now that we´ve been putting his advice into action, it´s
actually worked and I know that I´ve said it 50 times, but this branch
is amazing and the church is true!
And the family reunion sounds awesome, wish I could´ve been there.
Record for the largest family reunion? Did we make it? That´d be really
funny actually...record for the largest family reunion.... the Smith
Family. Mormons. Go figure haha.
And school starts on the 19th?! HA! Oh well. Life happens. But enjoy your senior year, Parker, because it ends really fast haha.
And I was thinking about this this morning when one of the elders
asked me how much time I had in the mission. On Wednesday: 9 months.
Wow. 9 months. I don´t understand. It´s going too fast. But really. 9
months already. I received my call over a year ago. What?! Oh ya, and
Parker can have his call in February if he´s looking to leave right away
haha. Ya, that´s kinda a weird thought too.
But anyway, life´s good. Havin' some great lessons everyday. I´ve seen the gospel change lives and it´s definitely changing mine.
Con amor,
Elder Groneman
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