Stumbling stones

This week has been literally insane, full of ups and downs. The ups- we are focusing on a sector and the lord has blessed us with some future investigators that seem promising, we did a lot of service this week helping a sister who´s inactive daughter moved in and we´re teaching her kids Camila and Javier who will be baptized in May, Javier is progressing but Camila has had every excuse not to come to church...ugh. We also got a lot of things organized as faras maps of our area go, we drafted a branch mission plan and trained our branch mission leader in his calling so he can better help us. We also had a zone conference thursday and it was THE BOMB! So much fun to hear the new updates for the mission from President Essig who recently went to a big mission president counsel in Buenos Aires, they are making a lot of changes to the mission with the increase in missionaries and particlarly sisters. We had 169 missionaries in the mission when President Essig started and now we have 240, almost 100 more! They´re also gonna have sister District leaders that are going to be in charge of all the sisters which will be cool. The zone conference was also awesome case we played a ton of fun games, got to socialize with all the other missionaries (cause we barely see eachother) and they had a really nice lunch for us, it was like dinning at a 5 star restaurant, sooo nice of them, they really take care of us! We also had a lot of less active members we´ve been visiting come to church this sunday and we were so happy about that! And the biggest blessing of all was that an investigator came to church who we´ve never even met or seen, he simply walked in and said he was led by the spirit of God, how incredible! He doesn´t live in the sector we´re focusing on, but we are definitely going to go teach him and baptize his whole family! We also got to speakin sacrament meeting yesterday, I was an emotional mess. If the mission has done one thing for me so far I´d have to say that it´s softened my heart. People who know me know I don´t like crying and try to hold it in, but in the mission I seriously can´t control it, the spirit pricks my heart and the tears start flowing, but I think it´s a good thing and something I needed to learn and be humble about. My message touched the hearts of the congregation and high councilman that was present, I shared my experience about the branch I was in back home and how I was only a mere spectator to the missionry work there and not a participant and that with time my branch as closed.Now they seem more eager to help us in missionary wor so they can have their chapel built, they need 15 more priesthood holders! So now the downs- most of our appointments fell through, no one came to our english class, our numbers we´re low this week and even though we´ve been working hard at the same time I´ve felt unproductive and like we haven´t been teaching a lot and it was frustrating. Me and Hermana Cottle have a lot of energy and are eager to teach and I´ve felt like Hermana Casique hold us back sometimes because she works at a slower pace, but I´ve been learning to teach by example and be patient. This week we have had several stumbling stones as you can see and some have been quite literal. Hermana Cottle ran over a loose rock and jumped off her bike thankfully nothing bad happened. I fell off my bike, flew off I guess is a better description because it was dark and I didn´t see a speed bumb and was trying to grab my planner and drive with one hand. I landed on my shoulder and had pretty bad whip lash, my shoulder kills sometimes and I´ve just been stretching it and puting some icy hot on it, I scratched up my knee a bit and have a hue bruise but I´m mostly fine, luckily I had my helmet on cause I stratched it up, that could´ve been my head! But Hermana Casique takes the cake, yesterday biking to ward council we were bookin it through a dirt road and her bike slid and she flew off and landed on her knees, she totally biffed it and was bleeding everywhere! Next thing we knew the whole ward council was outside trying to help her and we took her to the stake president house who is a surgeon. So we´re chillin in his mansion for a couple days while he treats her wound, she might need stitches on a knee the other one is scratched up and bruised. She cried a lot and we all felt her pain, so please pray for her so she can recover quickly. I was frustrated at first because I knew this meant we wouldn´t be able to work not that we´ve got one man down, we´re hoping arrangments can be made so that me and hermana cottle can get back to santa maria, but for now we´re here living the good life, his house is huge and super nice and they have been so hospitable towards us. But part of me feels guilty because I want to be out working and sweating and bringing more souls to the Lord! Pray for the three of us and I´m sure the Lord has a plan and purpose for all of this.

Luke 4:11

Peace & Blessings

Hna. Ibarra

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