Today is día de la bandera... flag day. I´m not actually sure what it means, but it meant we had to walk farther to get to an internet place because everything is closed.
But anyway, we´ve decided that we like Villa Floresta. It´s the BIGGEST area of my entire mission, but we´re starting to get the hang of it. Some parts are so far away that the members tell us "don´t worry about walking there, we´ll drive you." It´s a WARD which means there are lots of people in church on Sundays and we have all the priesthood leadership positions filled and there are teachers for every class, so we just have to invite people to church :) The bishop did ask me to give a talk, though, and he assigned me "An Ensign to the Nations" by Elder Holland from general conference. It was a really great talk, and I mostly focused on learning by the spirit--making sure we spiritually prepare ourselves for our church meetings so we can learn what Heavenly Father wants us to. Sometimes we just want revelation and answers for free, and we overlook all the tools that Heavenly Father has given us to prepare ourselves to recieve those answers (reading the lessons beforehand, really preparing ourselves for the sacrament, patriarcal blessings, etc.). The bishop did make one mistake, though, he told me to talk as long as I wanted, so I just gave the entire talk I had prepared. It was about 15/20 minutes. haha, I guess he repented a little after because he had prepared a talk and had to cut out a lot of stuff. Next time he´ll give me a time limit :) ok next time will be a 5 minute testimony and I´ll be really freaked out so I won´t want to talk very much (you know, last testimony in the
mission....)
We´re finding new investigators, but we really need to help them progress and I don´t think a lot of the people we found last week will really be that willing to progress. We´ll find some new, great ones this week.
Nobody died in our hammer/nail lesson last week. We brought 3 little scrap pieces of wood, some nails, and hammer to teach about baptism, repentance, and the sacrament. We had their 8-year-old son drive some nails into the first piece of wood and we started naming some "little-kid" sins (lie, not do your homework, steal a piece of candy, hit your sister). The really funny part was when he yelled, "Wait a minute, I never hit my sister!" hahaha we laughed SO hard, because he didn´t renounce any of the other ones. Then we explained about repentance, that you can take the nails out of the wood. But those little holes are still there, so what do we do about that? We explained the atonement and baptism (since he and his dad are both getting ready :) and how, because of the atonement, Christ can remove those holes and we can be a new person. So we took out the second piece of wood. And then had him drive a nail into it. So now, you´ve gotten baptized, but you sinned again. You repent again, but you can´t get baptized again--what do you do? We talked about the sacrament and how we renew our baptismal covenants and we can be just as clean and perfect as before. We then gave him all three pieces of wood and he named them Pedro and said he´d keep them by his bed, haha. He´s a really cute little kid.
Just so you know, people still tease me here about being lactose intolerant. They say "ok so for lunch we´ll have a pizza.... with extra cheese. And for dessert chocolate milk with a dulce de leche/cream cake with EXTRA butter" and I laugh and tell them how funny and original they are... haha. But now everybody knows and I´m not sick any more :)
President Arnold is coming this week (Thursday) for zone conference.
Everyone´s being REALLY serious about it. I´m scared. He´s probably going to eat me or fry me with his dragon breath or something. Just kidding, I´m excited. He can´t be THAT bad... though I am still haunted by that Elder Aidukaitis visit... I´ll let you know if I have nightmares this week.
Anyway, we´re still working and freezing our butts off! I love you all!
Love,
Hna. LaPray
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