This week has been hectic, when is it not?! We moved out of our place last monday, apprently there`s a property war going on with the mission housing Elder and the owner of our previous house. She doesn`t want to pay back the $400 downpayment if there was no damage in the house so she`s been evading Elder Condie, so he asked us to pretty much spy on the house and pass by once a day to make sure the owner hasn`t come back and that she pays the money before moving in and closing the contract...skeeeetch!
We did sime service this week helping our ex-branch president paint his house that he expanded, that was fun! We seldom do service projects around here cause everyone complains that we`re gonna get dirty or that it`s work for men, clearly they haven`t seen how solid my 6-pack is from doing 4 minute planks ;D
We also had a multi-zone conferenec with our new mission president, Pdt.Videla and his wife. I am so in love with them! He is the funniest guy ever, he`s Chilean so he was using all this slang and we were all cracking up! His wife is a sweetheart and she actually teaches us things since she can speak spanish which is awesome! It`s like having 2 mission presidents! No doubt they are going to make miracles here, our mission is enormously blessed to have them! P.S. I met an Elder Diaz in this conference from Kendall, what?! A fellow Cubaniche! Well actually he`s Chilean, but ya`ll alraedy know it don`t matter where your from, if you live in Miami you WILL pick up the cuban accent, haha! We got to talking about croquetas, Pollo Tropical and Jupiña, there was no stopping us, hahaha!
As far as investigators go Ricardo is progressing smoothly towards his marriage and baptism end of the month. Maria Pinto had a few doubts about the law of chastity and dressing modestly, one thing led to another and next thing I know she was talking about nude beaches...oh dear! Hopefully it`s something she`ll come to understand with time. We left an investigator that wasn`t progressing, her name is Luisa. She has a lot of potential, she reads the Book of Mormon and everything, but after teaching her for over 2 months she hasn`t stepped foot once at church cause she says she simply hasn`t felt the desire grow in her. When I told her she had our number and that when she was ready to act upon her faith she could call us she scrunched up her face and started to ball like a little girl! It broke my heart, but sometimes tough love is necessarys o they can reflect and start taking things seriously.
We had a huge miracle happen this saturday with an old investigator named Ingrid. She`s from peru and about a month ago Hna.Thomas and I taught her the restoration and she just ate it up and loved it! We thought fersure we had found another golden investigator, but upon our return appointment no one was home. We passed by several times the following weeks and tried to call with no luck and thought "oh well, guess it was too good to be true after all." But saturday afternoon we were walking to contact a referal when all of a sudden I felt a little tap on my back. When I turn around it was a little girl who said "My mom wants to talk to you!" I looked and a couple ways back it was Ingrid with her baby in the stroller! She said she had been in a serious accident while walking with her baby in her arms and got hit by someone on a motorcycle. She was badly battered and bruised all over and her sell phone had broken in the accident. She invited us over and told us she was so happy she saw us today, she had been waving but we hadn`t noticed so she sent her daughter Wendy to run after us, "I was scared Id never see you again!" We summed up the restoration and invited her to go to church, she was more than pumped and showed up in her sunday best with her daughters Wendy and Pedro and stayed for all 3 hours! She said she loved what she learned and shared with me that her grandma who is over 100 years old is a faithful member of the church in Peru and taught her things that she loved about the church and that she thinks it would do her kids a lot of good. Last night we left her a Book Of Mormon and she committed to a baptismal date for the end of August! Lastly last night one of our appts. failed so I felt impressed to visit a recent convert. He was home alone, but thankfully Hna.Adamson came back saturday morning so we`re in a trio and can enter his home. We sang a short him and I said an opening prayer and asked for peace in his home. When we said amen tears were streaming from this brother`s eyes. He thanked me and said he was going through a super rough time, that he was having issues with his family and reverted to bad drinking habits. He said the guilt is eating him alive, that he was sick of falling back to the same mistake time after time and that he can`t escape his past. He excused himself to the bathroom to go cry it out and as I looked around this brother`s filthy home I told Hna.Thomas and Hna.Adamson, "Let`s clean!" I grabbed the broom, Hna.Thomas washed the dishes and Hna.Adamson cleaned the surfaces. When this brother came out after getting a hold of himself he just started to bawl all over again and thanked us. Afterwards, we sat down and I told him that we appreciated the confidence he had in us to share his problems, but that we don`t have the authority to receive confessions and that he should speak to the branch president who will lovingly guide him through the repentance process and help him kick the habbit once and for all. There was hope in his eyes and a sweet spirit filled the home as we left, I told him to take all the credit for cleaning the house so his wife would be happy :)
Well to finish off the week I once again got a cold. It started out friday with a cough at our Leadership Council with Pdt. for all the leaders in the mission, the next day I had a splitting headache so I worked through out the day, took an antibiotic the mission nurse recommended me and stayed the night hours at a members home so I wouldn`t breathe in the frigid air. It was the branches 2nd counselor`s home and he gave me a priesthood blessing and the next morning I decided I felt good enough to proselyte. But by the time we got home I was beat. I crawled into bed and woke up in the middle of the night totally congested, feverish with a splitting headache and a lot of pressure on my face from the congestion, I pretty much feel like my brain is gonna bust out of my eye socket, it`s terrible. I`m currently at a members house resting while my companions write their family and get groceries and what not. Being sick in the mission is the worst, this is the Lord`s time and you feel like a waste just laying around being sick. But like Elder Holland said "if we do not take time to be well, we most assuredly will take time later on to be ill." So I just need to allow my body to heal. Hna.Videla shared some comforting words with me this week, that satan tries to attack missionaries in 3 ways. The first is with disobedience, he`ll try to convince us that it`s okay to bend or even break the rules and standards in the mission handbook, but that when a missionary is an obedient and faithful servant of the Lord he tries to hinder the work the next way, physically. We`ll get sick and ill, but this will only hinder the work for so long. And that`s when he attacks us the 3rd way, mentally, with stress and depression. There`s no way he`s gonna get me with tactic #3, he may have won the battle but he hasn`t won the fight! It`s a blessing we`re in a trio so my companions can keep working while I recover, the Lord`s work will not be hindered!!!
Your prayers will be much appreciated so I can have a speedy recovery and give it my all these last weeks!
xo,
Hna.Ibarra
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