I´m pretty much all better. My body is still trying to figure out how to digest food right and I´m still taking some anitbiotics, but now I´m off the pain medication and am feeling great! Ah, there´s nothing like being really sick to make you super grateful to be healthy. I hope this feeling of gratitude will carry me to work even harder in my area. No Mom, it wasn´t a parasite. It was an infection in my intestines. I don´t know what type of infection, but the nurse said it was probably caused by something I ate. We´re assuming it was some food from a fritanga (street vendor) that I had last week. Needless to say, I won´t be eating from fritangas anymore. I don´t think it´s anything permanent. I already gained back my appetite and am eating normally again. But goodbye tan. Hello pale. Haha I need to get some sun again to get my tan back.
We were able to go back out and work in our area on Thursday night. So we only had two full days of teaching/tracting this week (Friday and Saturday). I was pretty stressed for all the time we had lost while I was sick and for not having visited our investigators all week. I worried that our numbers would be horrible this week and that we wouldn´t be able to bring anyone to church on Sunday. But God blessed us with another little miracle. Friday, we did divisions with two member so that we could split up and double the number of lessons. That helped. It was pretty exhausting jumping back into the missionary schedule of walking all day after 4 days in bed, but I did it. And the next day was easier. Also, my comp did awesome without me. I need to give her more chances to take the reigns. Then, Sunday in the morning, we did divisions with members again so that we would have time to pass by for all of our investigators and bring them to church. We ended up bringing 5 people to church and the church attendance was up by 33 people! I was so happy and relieved. I hope things continue to go well in our area and we can keep strengthening our ward.
I think God wanted to teach me a little something about faith. When things are beyond our control and there´s nothing more we can do, that´s when God steps in and manifests his power. 2 Corinthians 2: 9-10 "And he said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me... for when I am weak, then am I strong." I was really weak at the beginning of this week. And a little weak in faith towards the end of the week, worry that we wouldn´t have success on Sunday, but God´s power is made perfect in weakness and he showed me that even when the odds are completely against us, God can do miracle. Anything is possible with God. We just need to have the faith look past the seemingly poor probabilities.
We´re teaching this awesome guy named Leonardo who is reading the Book of Mormon and praying and went to church on Sunday. He was baptized in a church called the Church of Christ and when we invited him to be baptized he said he couldn´t be baptized again because he was already baptized. Never heard that one before... not. Haha. But anyway, we explained the priesthood authority and he still didn´t seem to understand so we brought the district leader and then on Sunday, we brought the Elder´s Quorum president and he explained things really well and Leonardo accepted a baptismal date for August! It was awesome. He even said that maybe God will want him to get baptized earlier! He said, "When I get my answer, I get baptized that same day." Ah, I´m praying to much that he will be able to recognize his answer when he gets it! He was in a war earlier in life and God saved his life like two times. I know God preserved him for a purpose. He had to learn about the restored gospel!
I forgot to mention last week that the mission accomplished the goal of baptizing 102 families in the month of June. I wish I could say we contributed a family to that number, but we did not. We just contributed a lot of prayers for the whole mission. And we are working hard to try to baptize a family soon. I have yet to baptize an entire family in my mission. I hope I can do it before I get transferred from this area.
My recent convert Elizabeth went to the temple in Honduras to do baptisms for the dead a couple weeks ago with the stake! How awesome is that? It brought me joy to hear that. Also, yesterday, we got to church late after leaving to fetch an investigator and missed the sacrament. I felt so incomplete and didn´t want to miss taking the sacrament even once on my mission because it has become something so much more sacred for me in the mission, so I asked the Bishop if we could still take it and he arranged for the sacrament to be blessed in the secretaries office and given to us. And guess who blessed it? Mauricio! It was so special to have one of my converts bless that sacrament especially for me and my companion. It´s like a circle. Hermana Cruz and I helped him receive the gospel and now he was helping my companion and I receive a sacred ordinance on the Sabbath.
I´m ready to hit the ground running this week and see some more miracles. Hope you all have a fantastic week and stay healthy! Until next week, Hermana Hawkins
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