Week 9 - Hermitage

Buenos días mi familia!
This week was really one of those weeks were the days felt like weeks and the week felt like a day.
One of the reasons could be that we had zone conference this week. I really loved it because it taught me what I need to improve on. But it felt like an eternity because it went from 8-4:30. There was a ton of training and sooo many role plays. And if you don't know yet, I hate role plays haha. They expect you to ask inspired questions and have the spirit but it's so hard for me because I know they are just missionaries and not someone who really could use the message. But I still learn from them. :) I guess I will give more details about my companion. (Someone asked for more) He's from Ogden Utah and he turns 20 in 10 days. He's been out for 14.5 months now. His Spanish is really good, which is awesome because it is making mine improve so much. He's kinda quiet, but it's ok we still talk a ton. The only thing that bugs me about him is his driving. The (death) box in our car tells us when we need to fix something about our driving, like our speed. So it says to slow down once you are going 7 over. So instead of going 6 over everywhere, he likes to accelerate as much as he can until it registers it and then he slows down usually to 10 below when it says he's good. He thinks it's faster that way. It's not haha. But really he is awesome and has a great spirit with him. I'm glad he's my trainer. He always asks what I think we should do instead of just making all the decisions. It's awesome. But that is all the stuff I can think about for him. Now for the rest of the week.
This week I really learned what the scriptures meant by "after the trial of your faith". From the start of the week we weren't finding any success. Every single appointment they either cancelled on us or weren't there. Which meant we had to spend most of our time tracting during times when no one is home. The people we could find didn't want to listen. 90% of them said "I already have a church" and would just shut the door and lock it. Sure we found a couple who were nice enough to listen, but they didn't seem interested in what we had to say. But then Friday finally comes around. The beginning of the day is looking the same as the rest of the week, but the last thing we have scheduled is an appointment with one of our solid investigator families.So we knew that it wouldn't fall through. We really tried to find a member to go with us, but no one would answer our calls or texts. So we went anyways. They are from Venezuela and the husband, David, has been living here with the son for a year working. The wife, Julie, just moved here a month ago. What's really awesome is that a week after Julie showed up the branch president married them. And that was before we started teaching them. They also don't drink or smoke so all the things that are usually a problem were already solved before we started teaching them. When we got to their house, we spent a good amount of time just talking to them. But then after a little while, we started with a prayer and began our lesson. And the spirit was so strong during it. We taught the restoration and really focused on the dispensations and priesthood authority. They ended up teaching each other most of the lesson after we would explain some parts. When we got to the point where we asked them to pray about Joseph Smith, David responded with "I don't need to, I already believe that he was a prophet". He said it so convincingly. We still committed him to pray about, but it made me so happy that he could feel the spirit that strong during the lesson. We are going to start to teach them 2 times a week now so we can get them prepared for baptism. We are going to commit them with a solid date this next lesson after we teach the Book of Mormon really solidly and 2 nephi 31, but I have faith that they will say yes. They have gone to church 3 times now, and the first time was the day after our first lesson. Julie didn't go yesterday because she was fixing something at their house, but David did. The only thing we struggle with is David is always falling asleep because of his crazy ours he works. But we have started just asking him a bunch of questions during the lessons to keep him involved. But just that one lesson made the rest of the weeks hardships worth it. On Saturday we had another lesson at the end of the day with a Honduran family. It's a single mom, Anna, and her four children and also Anna's mom, Julia. They have known the church for 10 years now, but the last lessons they had with missionaries was 6 years ago. For some reason they didn't have a teaching record so it was a miracle we found them. Anna has the potential to be baptized really soon. She really understands the restoration and knows there's a need for the priesthood power. Julia on the other hand is going to take awhile. She has been a catholic all her life and is one of those really stubborn ones. She always tries to stump us during our lessons but Anna usually is the one to answer her moms questions. It's really nice because they are questions that would stump us haha. Our goal is to start bringing a member with us every time to help us explain things better and also to convert Anna first. Once we do that we believe that she will be able to convert her mom. But we will see in the coming weeks. But this area could be seeing a few baptisms soon. Maybe not while I'm here, but hopefully it is. Last thing for the week. For dinner last night we had menudo. Which is just a fancy word for cow stomach soup. It's basically the same texture as fat off of meat. But also my mind knew it was stomach. I have a picture of it, but we couldn't finish it. Luckily the member told us that most Hispanics don't even like it, so if we don't like it we don't have to finish it. I also tried some fried pig skin. That I could tolerate more, but still not good. But it was the first experience I've had so far with weird authentic Hispanic food.
I think that's the week!

Con amor,
Elder Williams