Brisas - Week 7

¡Hola!

We just had our first week after transfers! I think I forgot to write about transfers last week, because nothing changed. I'm staying with my baby though haha:) Last Monday we all got to be together when transfers happened (because it was our stake MTC night), so we got the news face-to-face, instead of a phone call late at night. That was the first time that ever happened, so that was pretty cool.

This week was good and bad. I feel like most weeks are like that though. The mission president changed the sister training leaders thing, so now we only have 2 for the entire mission. The sister training leaders have to spend 24 hours with every companionship, every transfer, so they'll be crazy busy. We had Hermana Torales with us (my grandma:)) so we got to learn from her a lot Saturday. It was really helpful because she opened Brisas. There were a couple people in our area book she was able to pull out that might be promising to teach. One thing the president is pushing is for us to teach the atonement really well with investigators. Hermana Torales was showing us how we can do it better, but its hard!

There is so much about the church that took so long for ME to really understand, or that I'm still understanding and to teach people here with their Catholic backgrounds, you'd think would be easier, but it´s really not. Too many people here are content where they're at and its frustrating. One of our biggest problems right now, like most missionaries, is finding people to teach. You'd think because we're doing what we're supposed to, we're trying to follow the spirit, we'd magically find all these ready people, but no. Its so true that only a few out of dozens that you contact will be very hopeful. Right now I'm just trying to not get too discouraged!

On Friday night we had an especially tough night. We went to an appointment of this super nice lady, and AGAIN, said she couldn't because something came up. We went to our back up, who we've had one lesson with before, and I wasn't too excited because the time before she said she was just listening to us because her brother said she should. She's around 50 and kind of a grumpy person. She never married and her mom was her world, until she died like a year ago or so. We figured we had her "needs" figured out, so this lesson would be better, but it really wasn't. At least on my part I guess :/ When we were there we tried to get her to pray, and she absolutely refused to with us because she said she "didn't feel 100%."  Since she refused to pray, I decided to turn the lesson into a "we should always pray" lesson, but before I wanted to ask a couple questions to make sure that was really the direction we should go instead of our plan. My companion always tells me I don't leave enough pauses, so I purposely left more pauses for my companion to be more involved, but it came across to the investigator that I didn't know my scriptures or what to share and she totally let me know it. I can't remember now everything she said, but she was super rude. I explained that we wanted to share something that would specifically benefit her, and since she was impatient, I just went ahead and shared what I had been thinking. We read in the Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 32:8 - 9) where it says to always pray and when you feel like not praying, its the evil spirit telling you not to. My companion read it (this investigator also refuses to read with us) and explained it, then looked to me, so I asked her if she believed what the scripture is saying is true. I figured she'd be like, yes- now I understand that its not good to not want to pray. But nooo, haha. She went off at me AGAIN how it was a stupid question and that's why she hates having people like us visit her, and duh if its in the scriptures its true. She also said all kinds of stuff to me how I don't have confidence in what I teach if I ask questions like that and all sorts of nice stuff. I've never, ever had a lesson like that where I've just gotten attacked for everything. It made me mad that because SHE was the one who refused to pray, and if she really believed what it said, she should want to change.  My companion told me after that she probably just doesn't like Americans or something because everything my companion said was angelic.  I was the only one she had a problem with.

 

We had that lesson, and then right after, a lesson with a less active family. I think I have written about them before, but basically everyone had a problem with the law of chastity. I won't go into details about everyone, but its just sad because their family always has so much contention. We went and taught them the law of chastity finally and the seriousness of it, but when we gave the commitment, the mom refused. The mom wants to obey it because she 100% knows its true, but doesn't want to stop her relationship. Her daughter was there too, who's barely starting to get into that stuff, and the mom was criticizing her the whole lesson, yet the mom admitted that she's not willing to change what she's criticizing her daughter for.

To end that night, we got home late, so my companion got grumpy like she always does when she's tired, haha. It was just tough. When my district leader called that night though, I told him it had been a discouraging day and he reminded me how things we do now will have an eternal effect. I started thinking about my converts from my other area and how they'll forever be my converts and that's a pretty cool thing. It really made me want to work hard here and activate all these less actives that are falling away and baptize.

Maybe right now things seem hopeless, but I'm just really hoping all our efforts will somehow help these people!

Love to you all,

Hermana Harper