Much to Tell

Hola familia y amigos,

   Wow, it feels like just yesterday I was writing you all with my predictions for transfers. Can it really be that another transfer is already almost over? This Sunday we´ll find out who has changes. I´m pretty sure I´ll be staying a fifth change here to finish my comp´s training. Welp, we just got word that President for some reason decided to cut the intenet time in half (now it´s only 45 minutes) for the whole mission! So if I don´t have time to respond to everyone´s email, you know why. I´m trying to type as fast as I can cuz there´s a lot to write about.

   Yesterday we had 11 investigators at church! It was great! Especially because Juan finally went to church with Marta! The day before we did a fast with them in mind and it payed off! Oh, I hope we can see them get baptized this month! The mission goal for this month is to baptize 306 people, and of that, 107 families. 

    Sadly, Alfredo and Mirna didn't show up at church yesterday even though they had promised. I´m pretty sure we´re going to have to drop them. It´s SO sad because they seemed SOOOO prepared! Grrr. It´s frustrating. But I´d rather spend time visiting people who want to progress.

    We found this less active named Miriam and started teaching her 13 year-old daughter Indyra and her husband Juan. Miriam said she stopped going to church because all her kids go to an Evangelical church and they kept begging her to go with them, so she started going there with them, but never got baptized. She said that church doesn´t make her fill "full" and that she´s been feeling lonely. She says she´s always known this is the true church. She just needed some encouragement to go back to church. So God sent us to her and now she´s come to church 2 weeks in a row with her daughter. Her husband was gonna go yesterday, but got called in to work to finish a construction job that needed some extra work. But wanna here a really cool story about Juan? We went to visit him this week and he told us that people, including some of his own kids, have been mocking him and saying that the "Mormon church" is bad and that it isn´t true and its ´not the legitimate church. And you know what he responded, "I´ve been to a lot of churches and I haven´t felt good in any of them. I´ve never been to the Mormon church. I´m gonna try this. And I´m gonna get baptized on the 28th." Say what!? AWESOME! We had set a baptismal date with him for the 28th in the first lesson with him, but we had no idea he had taken it to heart so much! So cool! Indyra is also preparing for the 28th.

    This Friday, we´ll be having the baptism of a 19 year-old girl named Gabriela is was SUPER prepared for the gospel and is super excited for her baptism. She´s inviting everyone. Something funny about her is that she was a referal given to the other pair of sisters in our ward, but before they went to contact her, we happened to come across her in the street and put an appointment with her and started teaching her so she became our investigator! Haha. She has been going through some really rough times. She was actually introduced to the church by a member friend, who later betrayed her in a really cruel way and fell away from the church. But she didn´t let that change her interest in the church. It is so amazing that she could recognize that what her friend did to her is not something that we teach in our church. She had an interview with the bishop yesterday and he later told us that it was a special interview and that he could see that the spirit is touching her heart and that we´re on the right path as missionaries. That was cool to hear. 

   Also, Veronica (the wife of Donald) finally went to church yesterday! We decided to pay her another visit yesterday in the morning, and boy did she need us. She was feeling really depressed and said she sometimes doesn´t want to go on living because she´s so sad thinking about her two sons that passed away. One commited suicide in her own house while she was gone for just 20 minutes and the other was only 5 years old and was electrecuted in an accident. She has suffered SO MUCH. But I know the only person who can heal her is Jesus Christ. Please keep her in your prayers. 

   We´re still working with Reyna and the only thing thats holding her back from getting baptized is her boyfriend. She has the hope that they´re gonna get married and baptized together, but judging from the fact that he´s lied to us like 3 times about going to church, I doubt he has any interest in the church. 

   The meeting with Elder Alonzo was inspiring. I was wrong about the Young Men´s General president coming too. Too make a long story short, there´s a missionary here who just found out she has a genetic sickness that will completely alter her life and destroy career plans and I´m pretty sure there is no cure. A normal case of the sickness ranges between 20-40 on a point system and a severe case of the sickness is about 40-60. Her test results came back as over 3000. I could not believe her when she told me. That´s is really bad! It made me cry to hear about it. Anyway, realizing how much she has been suffering without ever complaining (she didnt even want people to know she was sick) has really changed my perspective. Sometimes I whine about the tiniest little things, and here she is humbly suffering in silence and not looking for attention or anything, but rather faithfully accepting the will of God. She is such an amazing example. Well anyway, in the meeting with Elder Alonzo, he had finished his talk and passed the time to his wife, but then stood up again and said the spirit had prompted to say something else and that he couldn´t forget to day it. He said that at lunch hour he had felt an overwhelming exhaustiona and thought it was just from such a spiritually-strong atmosphere having present many powerful missionaries, but that later in the meeting he realized that wasn´t it and that the Spirit made him feel tired to let him know that there were some missionaries present who were struggling a lot physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Then he left an apostolic blessing and promise that they would be healed. He said, "Doctors and medicine can´t do what God can do." I was in tears thinking about that particular missionary and knowing that blessing was made especially for her. I know God knows our individual needs and struggles. I know the leaders of the church are called of God.  I know the power of the priesthood is really and that the Holy Ghost can give us personal revelation. 

 Well, I´m completely out of time. More to come next week. Thank you all for the notes of encouragement. It´s helping meet to not have a stress-attack. I love you all. 
Hermana Hawkins