Wow, what a week! I'm not really quite sure where to start with this one since so much exciting things happened this week! I officially made it around the sun 20 times this week and my birthday was really good especially thanks to all of you guys for all the birthday wishes and thoughts! I also got a fun package from my mom with some light up balloons so we could have a party in our house! Last Monday we got to go to Buffalo Wild Wings (YAY!) with some of my mission buddies to celebrate my birthday so that was fun! On my birthday we went with an investigator and his wife to the visitors center in the temple! They also heard that it was my birthday so they prepared a super good breakfast for us which was nice. In the temple though we has an awesome experience and Ricardo (the investigator) definitely was feeling the spirit. We talked a lot about eternal families and temple work and it brought tears to Ricardo's eyes since his mom recently passed away. In the afternoon on my birthday we were able to find a couple new investigators, and then at night, the relief society president invited us over. Her son also had the same birthday as me so they bought pizza and cake for us, invited the bishop over, and we had a good time. The leadership in our ward is so loving and awesome and I'm grateful for them. Of course we also had to celebrate with some birthday tacos! But I was really grateful to feel so much love and support this week and it's weird to think that next year on my birthday I'll probably be a poor college student at BYU hanging out with my friends and family! How fast has time been going by lately...
This week was also really awesome because I got to go back to my old area in Chimaulhuacan to baptize!! Fernando, Patricio, and Michel, all finally made it to get baptized and both Patricio and Michel (the little kids) wanted me to come back and baptize them. And I was pretty happy because you all know how much I love this kids. So that was a pretty cool experience and I was so so happy to see all the hard work it took with Elder Revolorio and Warnick finally paying off. Plus it's been a couple months since I've baptized so it was definitely satisfying and exciting getting back in the font for a swim! There was also a cool little miracle we had preparing for the baptism. I guess Saturday morning there was absolutely no water in the church, the tank was completely empty and none of the faucets had running water at all (Like that's never happened the day of a baptism before). Elder Warnick and Lopez said they were running and stressing out about how they could fix and nothing seemed to work. A couple hours before the baptism they said they tried to turn on the font one more time, and for some miracle, hot water came pouring out! They checked the tank again which was still empty and we all came to the conclusion that is was simply miracle water. So I guess the baptism must have been especially important to God because it was pretty cool being able to baptize these people in miracle water. I love them so much and was so happy to finally see them be able to follow our Savior and see the happiness on their faces. I love this work so much.
This week we also made another breakout performance at zone conference! This time it wasn't with Warnick and it wasn't the "12 Planchas of Christmas", but Elder Palacios and I prepared a funny skit about member-missionary work and everyone really enjoyed it. I always like thinking of different, creative ways to teach about a certain topic so I was grateful for another good idea to help everyone laugh and enjoy it while they learned. I'm even more excited though because we've decided to take our theatre performance to the NEXT LEVEL! We are planning a ward activity this week and it is going to be a "Mini MTC". We are making little missionary plaques for all the members and when they come we are going to have different workshops where we will teach them how they can better share the Gospel with their friends and family and how we can both work together to do the work of the Lord. At the end we are going to also perform our skit in front of the members, only this time, with more props and decorations and even more well planned out! Who knows, if I keep going at this rate as my president tells me, I might end up on "Saturday Night Live!"
So it seems like everything is going great right now. We have been able to have lots of success finding new investigators this week and getting a lot more help from the members! One night, an appointment fell and we didn't know what to do. I felt like we needed to go with the relief society president and my companion supported me. When we got there she seemed very happy to see us! She said that she felt like she needed to share the Gospel with her friend today but she didn't know how!! We helped her know how she could best share the gospel with her friend, have a little practice to give her confidence, and she was so grateful that we came by to help her. That is one of the reasons why we've prepared this activity in our ward because even when the members can feel the Spirit and the desire to share the Gospel sometimes they don't know exactly how to start the conversation so we are hoping our activity can help them with with that. Another funny experience we had was when a member was showing us some magic tricks and I told him that I was going to show him one too. I told him to pick a street name between the Lopez and the Sor Juana (the limits of our areas) and a number between 0 and 250 (also the limits of our area). He told us Pajarera 120 and I told him that there we were going to find people that were going to get baptized. It started out kind of just as a joke and he told us that if they actually get baptized he would give us free dinner ever Monday and Friday night. Well, we decided we were going to contact that house anyways and to our surprise, we found Carmen and Fatima, who have already talked to missionaries before but don't know why they stopped going to visit them but that they would also love to start coming back to church and listening to the missionaries again! So that was pretty exciting and you can imagine how excited we were too. Also on Sunday we had various members show up with investigators one who came up to us and said, "Elders, this is my niece, she would like to listen to the missionaries, when can you visit her?" Which is pretty much the golden question for a missionary lol. So we seem to be doing good as far as the missionary work is going and I couldn't ask for any more blessings right now.
The last crazy thing that happened, as mentioned in my email subject, was.... ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE! My guess is that all of Mexico was so excited I turned 20 the earth was just trying to celebrate too. This one wasn't as strong for us, and didn't do much damage around us, but we definitely felt it and I was just wondering how many more earthquakes are going to happen while I'm in the mission. Also this week I had a pretty funny dream, where I was Pokemon Go hunting with my family and the Kellis family. We stopped the car at a certain spot and got out to look for a rare pokemon when all the sudden... We saw Tim Duncan!! I was freaking out (although in my dream he seemed much shorter that 7 foot) and we all got pictures with him. It was kinda funny, and I woke up thinking that was the weirdest dream ever. Or who knows, maybe it is a sign for when I get home! So this week, as you can see was pretty crazy, from my 20th birthday, baptizing in miracle water, another stage performance at zone conference, meeting Tim Duncan (kind of) and surviving more earthquakes. How can the mission get any more exciting than this? (Besides volcanic rock surfing at least). I'm so grateful for all of the experiences my mission has given me though, friendships, experiences, and miracles I will remember forever. I better take advantage of my time now as a missionary before it's up! Thanks again for all the birthday wishes and I definitely love and appreciate you guys back home even more than you can think! Love you tons and have a GREAT week!!!
Elder T-Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment