Sunday, April 22, 2018

Week 63. La Pastora, Mexico.

Week 63: Pura Chamba.

This past week was one of the most stressful weeks of my whole mission. It was crazy busy. We barely had time to think haha.

A little bit about our investigators this week, so Arturo has been having huge family problems and Satan has been working super hard on him. He is so so close. He got in a arguement with his mom about baptism and he didnt feel comfortable and ready for the date we put with him. Its been super sad. We have been calling and texting him everyday and yet we get no responses. Its been kind of weird, this week we will see whats up. Jazmin has been falling into temptation a whole lot this past week. Shes smoked a couple times. Eduardo is still struggling with the law of chastity. This week, we want to focus on looking at the blessings if they keep the commandments, instead of what they are going to lose. Its been a little discouraging, however we have some great positives things to look forward to this coming week.

We found a couple new people who we see with a lot of potential. We found these 3 cousins who live together. Their names are Nayely, Monse, and Berenise. They are super awesome and have a strong desire to change. We will be focusing on them this coming week a whole lot. A couple other new investigators as well who we are going to be following up on this week. Including Marcelino, Agustin, Edgar, and the Familia Garcia. We are hoping for a great week!

Onto the busy stuff now, so we had Leadership Counsel on Wednesday. Leadership Counsel is when all of the Zone Leaders meet together with President and discuss what we can do better as mission and all of that fun stuff. It was really kind of cool.

Thursday, we had our Zone Conference. My companion and I really put some long nights into preparing for our Training. For our Zone Conference, my companion and I had to give a training on how we can use our testimony about the Book of Mormon with our investigators more effectively. As we were thinking about our topic and researching, we found out that ONLY 21% of of recent converts have read a full chapter of the Book of Mormon before their baptism. Thats super low. So we challenged our Zone to really use the Book of Mormon as the first tool of conversion. I have came to know that there is a difference between missionaries who focus on baptism and missionaries who focus on conversión. The Book of Mormon is the best tool for conversion. Once they understand and gain a testimony of the divinity of that book, they will be more receptive to what we are teaching. For the conference we put out a dynamic situation. We had a Hammer, a Nail, and a piece of Wood. We asked a missionary to help us. We told him to push the nail into the wood with his hand, well he couldnt haha. Then we gave him a hammer and told him to push it in now. After about 10 hits the nail was firmly into the wood. The dynamic broken down was, the Elder pushing it in, is the natural man thinking he can do things without Gods help. The hammer is the Book of Mormon(Gods help) and every hit from the hammer was a Chapter in the Book of Mormon. The Nail is their testimony, and the wood is the person. If we use the Book of Mormon and read chapters with our investigators, their testimony will start to get firmer and firmer in our investigators till it gets to the point where we cant take it out of them! Pretty sweet, Huh? We exhorted our zone to use the Book of Mormon everyday and hammer it into their investigators hahaha. I thought it turned out great!

We then finished off the week having Intercambios. As Zone Leaders we get to have the Intercambios with all the District Leaders and their companions. So I got to be with Elder Flores. He is one of my bestfriends here in the misión and has been here with me since Jaurez! Hes from Guadalajara and has 20 months here on the mission. I loved my time with him. Saturday, Elder Hernandez and I had our first full work day and were able to get a some great work done here in La Pastora!

During all of this time this week we have been planning our Zone Activity on PDay. We decided to play some Minute'to'Winit games. It turned out great! For our food, we had 200 tamales prepared for us and got 30 liters of this delicious mexican juice made for us. It was a success!

Although this week was very busy disouraging, and very tiring, Elder Hernández and I felt accomplished. We know the Lord is with us every step of the way and is giving us the energy we need to push through these things. I am very happy with this wonderful work. I love my companion. I love Monterrey. I love you all. I love my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. You all are awesome! I will talk to you guy soon.

Love, Elder Gibson


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