Sunday, January 13, 2013

Summertime in Mala la Buena

So cool. Hi everybody! The weather here is heating up everyday. As you all suffer in the cold icy snow, just imagine yourselves lying on a nice warm California beach getting a golden tan and that`s basically my life right now! Ha. Not really. I`m definitely getting tanner, but definitely not enjoying the beach...... But that`s ok!!! I have so much faith that God is placing people in our path to teach and baptize according to our obedience. There`s a saying in our misison, "Obedience brings blessings, but EXACT obedience brings miracles." So I`m doing my best to try to put that into practice. Miracle, miracles, miracles.....



Hmmmm.....let`s see. Probably the biggest miracle this past week was having the absolute privilege of baptizing dear ol` Hermano Hipolito. On Saturday afternoon, we visited his home about 20 minutes away by taxi van just to encourage and get him excited for his baptism later that evening. When we got there, we overviewed a little each commandment just to keep things fresh in his mind, and by the end of it I was crying because I was so happy to look into his eyes and see how much the light of Christ had taken hold in his soul. I have seen a real visible change in the glowing countenance of somebody who I absolutely know will never fall away from the church. I`m tellin` ya....this guy is absolutely a golden soul.  Later that evening, the chapel filled up as we waited for all the late comers to show up. We told everybody 6:30 pm for the baptism just so we could get started at 7:30. Yup....that`s Latin America folks. But what`dya know......Hipolito showed up at 6:30 on the dot. I think that just goes to show his devotion to not just receiving a testimony that these things are true, but of actually converting to the Lord and his Gospel. His baptism was a great success and he handled the cold water very smoothly with me! He`s one of those investigators that I can`t help feeling just super proud of. Go Hipolito!

So another kinda cool experience we had last Wednesday was with a new investigator named Wilmer. He had the missionaries before, but he feels insecure about being baptized because the rest of his family is "bien Catolico". Yeah, like everybody around here. But at the end of the lesson we invited him to pray, and he didn`t know how! Which surprised me, because one of the basic things we first teach is how to pray in the first lesson. So we helped him understand how to pray, and after he said the closing prayer there was just this rush of the Spirit after we all said "Amen." We all just sort of sat in silence for about 10 seconds and just knew that the Lord was touching the heart of this man. Elder Tohara and I think that in the future he would make an excellent bishop or branch president! I feel like the Lord is working wonders with him.

Our other four investigators with baptismal dates, Milusca, Alexis, and Antuane (who are cousins) and Cristian Jesus didn`t show up to church yesterday. So we`re having to do a little back-tracking with them. But I`m still absolutely hopeful in their progress as future members of the church. We found out yesterday that Jesus has a girlfriend who he doesn`t live with (which is rare/ a miracle here) so we`re glad he`s not passing through law of chastity problems, He also doesn`t drink or do drugs (another miracle) and his girlfriend wants to listen to the missionaries (yet another miracle). So that`s a good sign for us!


Anyway, that`s my weekly update to all yàll. Enjoy your last few weeks of vacation and I love, pray and think of you all fondly erry`day!

Elder Lundberg

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