Fantastic Week!!

EL SENOR ME HA DADO MUCHAS BENDICIONES!

But seriously though. Its true. The Lord has given me so many blessings. Especially last week!! It was goooood.

On Monday I was having a hard time getting out of Pday mode but we went to go see this less active woman that I didn't get to meet last transfer. I was so excited to meet her and I really, really like her. We call her Hna Bueno and she reminds me of my sister Julie. I needed to go visit her that night, it helped me. Its weird how missionary work kind of works the opposite way sometimes, because really, I'm the one that is growing. We are helping her study for an exam and she needs help with the English so we went back over about three more times that week to help her understand the English in the texts books. I really like being at her house because its super classy and it is decorated cute and she really just reminds me of Julie because she's stylish and she has this same kind of sass that Julie has that is hard to put into words. hahaha. It makes me happy going over there. She came to church for the first time since I've been here in Perth Amboy, so that means that we are doing our job as missionaries right!

Speaking of church. Church is either your reward for the week or your little slap on the wrists for the week. This week it was definitely our reward! We had so many less active members come to church this week who hadn't come in ages! And two of the families were all thanks to their Incredible Visiting Teacher! I have gained a huge testimony of Visiting Teaching while I've been on my mission. We have a branch assignment to help the sisters do their visits, so we like to spend a lot of time with the sisters helping them do their visits. We go with them if their companions can't go. This week we actually got to do a split, sister W went with sister Cruz to do her visiting teaching and I went to a meeting with the Relief Society presidency. It was really good. Sister Cruz helped this family to come back to church this week. Then the next day we went with the same sister, Sister Cruz, to help with another inactive family. This family is getting evicted from their house because they can't make the payment. We visit this family a lot, but they just never come to church for various excuses. But we got Sister Cruz involved and she was able to get them a bunch of boxes and other things that they needed for their move. So we went to deliver the boxes and the food that Sister Cruz got them and it was almost time for us to be home. It was about 8:50 and we have to be home at 9 unless were teaching a lesson, so we got on the phone with Paula, the one whose house we were going to and shared a scripture so that we could be in the middle of a lesson, then Hermana Cruz was following us in her car to Paula's house but she was going SO SLOW!!! It was so funny because we were in such a hurry but she kept getting lost. THen we finally got there and we were still in a hurry and we were trying to carry the boxes and they were heavy and we had this huge box of food and we were just in the middle of the street cracking up, then Hna Cruz had to drop all of the boxes because she was laughing so hard and she just kept saying "I'm going to pee. I'm going to pee." ahahahahaha. It was so funny. Then I slipped on ice - then we laughed even harder. It was such a good night. And Paula cried when we gave her all the stuff because she was so happy. Sister Cruz is the best example to us and that experience really helped strengthen our relationship with her because it was hilarious and we helped a sister in the ward. Now every time she sees us she says "CHICAS!! Porque usteds me no saluden!!" so we have to give her a hug every time we see her. It's just funny because she can spot us from across the building and just scream, "CHICAS!!" and we know it's her. I love her so much!! She's hilarious.

 

Friday we had a TERRIBLE lesson with Celenia, our investigator who WAS on baptismal date. We went in planning to teach about prophets, the Word of W isdom and chastity. It started fine, prophets was good, then we got to the Word of Wisdom. You have to have the spirit when you teach the commandments and it was not there. It was our fault. BUT it was also because of the member that we brought in the lesson.. she basically took over the lesson, which was really annoying because some people just don't know how to teach these things. You have to have the spirit, so when the member went off, it was so impossible to bring the spirit back. They were all trying to find ways around the Word of Wisdom.. then we ran out of time because we had to be somewhere so we were just going to teach chastity the next time, but the member brought it up, then Celenia was confused so we had to talk about it... But now she doesn't want to get baptized because the father of her sons lives in the DR and she doesn't know if she should wait to get baptized before or after they get married.... basically everything was terrible... so this week we have to try to fix that. I'm sort of mad. Things could have been handled a lot better than they were. But we're not perfect, but if the spirit is in our next lesson everything will be OK. Its not about our will, but God's.

BUT!! We have another investigator on date!! His name is Modesto! He is the one who has been attending church for about 6 months but he has never been anywhere close to having a baptismal date. When we first started teaching him we would always ask him if he would be baptized but he would decline because he "wasn't ready and wanted to know for sure before such a big commitment".... so we were kind of stuck with him. We taught him all the lessons but he still didn't have a testimony. So a couple of weeks ago we felt like the only way he would be converted was through the Book of Mormon and not through us. He was having a hard time understanding the importance of the Book of Mormon, which is understandable. It is a hard new concept for some people to grasp.. We had always given him chapters to read and he would read them, but he still didn't know why we used the Book of Mormon. So we decided to have him read from the beginning. He started a couple of weeks ago, and when we taught him last week, he had read 13 chapters in one week and he soaked it all in. It was starting to make sense to him. We started seeing a change in him, but we still weren't sure where to go with him. This Saturday we decided to invite him over to the church for breakfast with us and a couple in our branch. We made them pancakes, eggs and sausage. We had a good time talking with all of them. We started the lesson and we followed up on his Book of Mormon reading. He had kept reading and he is in second Nephi now. He started telling us about how he had been pondering deeply on the Book of Mormon and he compared his whole life to Nephi's. It was so incredible how much those two have in common and I have never seen one person gain so much from the Book of Mormon. The spirit was so strong. We weren't planning on asking him to be baptized.. but when he finished telling us about his pondering, we asked him if he believed the Book of Mormon was true. He said yes. Then we asked him to be baptized and he said, "well, yes. SO now what do we do!!" I loved that answer because I felt like he is going to do what ever it took to prepare for that day. We set him up with a day to prepare for that day and we told him all of the things he has to do to prepare for that day and we made plans to get him prepared. We were so led by the spirit in that lesson it was incredible! We were not expecting him to be baptized anytime soon, but its not our plans, its the Lord's. There is GREAT power in the Book of Mormon, all we have to do is read it and ponder it then ask if it is true. It was cool because we didn't even have to do anything... He just had to read it. I'm so amazed and feeling so blessed. He is so converted!!!! We also bought him some new ties to cheer him up because he has been having a bad week, and he came to church wearing a new tie in his new suit that he bought for church and he was just glowing. There is nothing better than seeing the change in people and I have truly seen that in Modesto and that is something that I want to see in ALL of my converts. I will not baptize someone if they are not ready and if they do not have a testimony. I do not want my converts to become inactive after their baptism. That happens way too often. I know that won't happen with Modesto. The change in him is REAL!!

 

SO it was what I would call a very successful week. We saw the Lord's hand every day. Last night we felt really prompted to knock at these one apartments that we had never been too, we just couldn't figure out which door, but we decided we needed to start somewhere so we took turns picking doors. The first two were rejections, then the third time it was my turn, I scanned the doors, then I saw this door with stickers across the court yard and I pointed too it, so we headed over there. We knocked and it was a lady from Uruguay. She was so sweet and we talked to her for a second then we introduced ourselves as missionaries and asked if we could set an appointment with her. She grinned and said absolutely and gave us a number day and time. When we left we felt really strongly that was the door we were supposed to knock... it was about 8 o'clock at that time so we had one more hour. We had 19 lessons for the week at that point and we needed one more lesson to reach our goal for 20 lessons for the week. We didn't have anything planned and we didn't know where to go so we said a prayer in the car... We still weren't feeling anything. Sister Weinstock said, "Just drive to Woodbridge then we'll know where to go from there" We got to Woodbridge and we were just driving around to see if we had any impressions. We weren't really getting any. So sister W said to me "I'm really not feeling anything. You, make a decision and well do it" I looked up and I saw the street "Bunns Lane" I said, OK, well I don't really feel anything either, but one of our investigator lives on this street, we could stop by and teach her. We agreed and we went to park the car. We prayed then got out of the car and started walking up to the door then Sister W. remembered this potential that her and Sister Haddock had contacted the transfer before. We had tried before but no one had answered. We decided to try her instead. We got to the door and knocked. Still no answer. Then the thought came to me that a lot of people live in one house in New Jersey and sometimes the front door isn't actually the front door.. its just kind of an awkward thing to figure out which door is the front door... so we decided to try opening it... so we opened the front door and to our luck! her front door was actually up the stairs!! We just could never tell because of the other door. That is why she was never answering because we were knocking the wrong door all along. We went up there and had a good first lesson with her and set a return appointment. It was cool to see the power of prayer. Sometimes we have to look for the answers and not just expect them. We have to pray with real intent to act.

Well, that's about it for this week. I'm excited for the weeks to come and to see Modesto and Celenia progress further towards baptism.

 

I hope you all have a good week!! Love and miss you!

-Sister Clark