Dear Mom and Dad,
Here´s a summary of my birthday:
I woke up and opened my package from you-- It was fantastic! I love the sweater and I´ve been basking in grape-nuts heaven all week and munching on the clif bars and sipping the hotchocolate-- yum! Then Hna. Centurión and I made my birthday cake to bring to district meeting: chocolate cake with peaches and dulce de leche in the middle, covered with chocolate whipped cream On top I wrote in Nesquick: 4 EVER, which is one of the mission themes this transfer-- achieve 200 baptisms in the mission for the fourth transfer in a row. When we put the candles in later, I used 22, but put them in the shape of 200. So, 200 4 EVER for the mission and happy 22 years old for me! In district meeting Elder Garcia started introducing his lesson, but turned it into a surprise introduction of my birthday! Everyone sang to me and all the missionaries in my district gave me an alfajor-- that´s a lot of alfajores. After the lesson, the other district in our zone (who meets in the other side of the stake center and is normally forbidden by new mission rules to associate with us) came over to sing to me again and watch me blow out the candles. Then we shared the cake. We finished it off in a flash, and my zone leaders licked the pan clean-- elders. :)
I had a great day and felt super confident, especially when contacting people in the street. I had a grin wider than the Mississippi and was asking questions like crazy. We visited Celeste and Elvira, who had bought chocolate cookies especially for my birthday, taught a great lesson to one of Celeste´s friends, and taught Evelyn and her mom.
At the end of the day we passed by the house of the Herrera family because Hna. Herrera had offered to give us dinner in tupperwares to take back to the pench. When we got there and Hna. Herrera opened the door, her two little kids, Micaela and Sebastián were waiting for me with a big birthday cake and birthday cards they made themselves. I was so touched. They sang to me and lit a candle on the cake for me to blow out and ordered me to make wishes. Best birthday ever!
I finished off my birthday eating Hna. Herrera´s mashed potatoes and milanesa in the pench and planning the next day like usual. I opened the letters you and Grandma sent me when I realized they were birthday cards. I loved the baby pictures of me on the cards. Genius!
Well, here is what happened this week/what´s going on with the investigators:
* Lucila and Enzo are proving very difficult to get a hold off and missed the last two Sundays of church, so they won´t be getting baptized this transfer. I´m not giving up on them though. I´m just going to be patient and give them the time they need. A 6 week transfer, after all, is a completely artificial constraint that often (unfortunately) has little to do with the rate of progress of a person towards accepting the gospel through baptism.
* We´ve been struggling with low lesson numbers all transfer and I´m not sure what to do about it. Low lesson numbers=fewer new investigators=lack of investigators progressing= fewer baptisms, so it´s a big deal. So far though I´ve avoided serious frustration or discouragement about it. I´m going to pray for help and keep working on it until it gets better.
* One of our investigators was praying to know if the church is true and unfortuitously opened her Bible exactly in Galations chapter 1--"why have you forgotten so quickly the gospel that was preached to you and accepted others who came preaching strange gospels?" or something like that. As a firm believer in revelation by letting your Bible fall open (works great if you´re looking for a spiritual pick me up, but isn´t a very responsible way of trying to verify eternal truths) she took that as an answer that she should stick with her current church. Depressing. But, we have an appointment with her tomorrow in which I will try to explain that the apostle Paul preached that sermon BEFORE the Great Apostasy.
* This week we met the mission standard of 140 contacts per week! We contacted 144 people! I´m very proud of us.
* EVELYN GOT BAPTIZED! The baptism of Evelyn was fantastic! Both sides of her family are inactive, but her uncle Marcos reactivated himself to be able to baptize her, and her aunt Iara has come to church two Sundays in a row! For her baptism, a bunch of her family from both sides came to sacrament meeting and attended the baptism! The stake president came and expressed his love to both sides of her family and told them how glad he was to see them. The ward welcomed them warmly, and now some of Evelyn´s family are thinking of coming to church more often, especially her mom! Evelyn is such a sweet, powerful example to her whole family and I know her baptism is going to work a miracle for them.
* We had 4 investigators in sacrament meeting! Reina and Esmeralda, two of my favorite investigators who sort of stopped progressing this transfer, agreed to let us pick them up for church! We ate breakfast with them in their house (banana bread made by Hna. Centurión of course! but this time we used our new cake pan since our improvised glass plate turned into baking dish shattered the last time we used it when we took it straight from the oven and put it on our cold marble counter) and took a taxi to the church. They even stayed for the baptism! And counting Evelyn and her stepfather (future investigator, woho!), that made 4 investigators in the meeting, my record here in Hurlingham! I was super happy!
* Quote of the week:
* Evelyn as she opened a Book of Mormon that we wrapped to give to her: "Oh, let it be the Book of Mormon, please! . . .YES! I´ve got a Book of Mormon, I´ve got a Book of Mormon! (she sang this part accompanied by a little dance she made up while holding her book). This kid is INCREDIBLE.
Well, that´s all I´ve got time for. I love you! Have an excellent week!
Love,
Ellis
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