Another Week

Hola familia y amigos!

Well, I think I pushed myself too hard last Monday hiking to the cross because the next day I woke up with terrible stomach pains and nausea and diarrhea and later had a fever, but I don't think it was something I ate because I didn't eat anything out of the ordinary. I think I just didn't keep myself sufficiently hydrated hiking to the cross. Also, when I said, "I'm gonna be sore tomorrow"... it was an understatement. I felt like I was walking around with knives plunged into my calves. It hurt sooooooo bad going up and coming down hills. I felt handicap because I was literally limping coming down some stairs on a bridge. Haha, people were probably wondering what the heck was wrong with me. My comp was sore too, but not as much. My leg muscles were tight and sore for the next three days. 

   Tuesday, we stayed inside all day because I was too sick to work. A member and his wife came over to give me a priesthood blessing and bring me some medicine. My stomach was sensitive for the next few days, but I was able to go out and work. I'm hunky dory now, so don't worry. :)

   We had three investigators at church yesterday: a lady named Juana that we taught for the first time the night before, a guy we had just invited in the street (that was a nice surprise that he came), and Luis´s wife Maura showed up! Luis is the one I mentioned a couple weeks back that we invited to the baptism last minute and he came! The next week he went to church, but yesterday the wife finally visited! Luis and Maura are AWESOME. I love their family. They've both been reading the Book of Mormon and praying and always welcome us into their home. Luis has totally felt the spirit in the lessons and knows that he's experiencing conversion, but he's having a hard time making some changes in his life, like giving up baseball on Sundays so he can go to church. His wife is Catholic so she's also struggling to change her traditions. We've tried to put baptismal dates with them a few times, but they don't want to commit. But all the commitments that they do make, they are completing. We decided to drop them for a week to see if anything changed and when we went back, Maura said Luis had been asking why we hadn't passed by. He told us he'd missed us, that he feels peace in our visits, and they were bring something extra. We told him that something extra was the Holy Spirit and that they can have it in their life as a constant companion. Luis told us, "Even if we're not members of your church, we'll always remember you because you've cahnged our lives" which made me worry he wouldn't ever get baptized, but this guy mentions baptize more than we do! Haha. I know he's thinking about it. He just needs a little encouragement to make changes in his life. We visited them last night and they fed us dinner! The mentioned that when they visited church, it seemed a little unorganized and we explained that the branch president is somewhat knew and is still learning and Luis said, "When I'm president, I'll make things more organized." Say what! Yeah, I could totally picture him as a future church leader. He loves making jokes about how we don't drink coffee too. He's definitely a jokester. Kinda reminds me of you, Dad. So I'm excited to see where things go with them.

  On a sadder note, we had to drop an investigator named Indira who was preparing for baptism. It was really sad, but we know we did our part to teach her the gospel. Hopefully one day, she'll come around. 

  Hope you all have a great week and are sharing the gospel with all your friends!

 Love, Hermana Hawkins