Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Week 39: Baptism, Obedience, and Missionary Purification

Hello Family!

Well, this week has been better. I have been learning how to manage everything and how to manage the area, sometimes it’s just hard to stretch to the calling. But we are getting used to it. This week has been a little slow as far as the work goes, we have been teaching about 2 lessons a day, we should be able to do better than that this week, and that’s actually not too bad for Bogota. I would like to be able to teach at least 3. But this week, we should be baptizing Miguel Angel Guerrero, the son of Daniel y Jennifer. Well that’s super exciting! He’s super excited to be baptized. Daniel told me that he wanted to do a Skype call with you guys, I gave him your information. I don’t know if he did it or not, but he told me on Tuesday “well, we’re gonna move guys. Can you guys have President send you where we are going?” It’s about 30 minutes south, still in Bogota. I got emotional. I don’t know if I can say I  have been through a lot with them, but I have felt their pain. But I have felt pain as.. I don’t know. Every investigator has a time when they start to fall away a little bit, but I am hoping that we are on the rebound from that with the baptism of Miguel. But ya, I’m not gonna lie I got emotional and a couple of tears were shed, but I bore my testimony to them that I know that this message will bless their lives. I know that where they go, the message is the same. That the Savior is willing to heal their scars, to make their marriage work, and make their family whole again. I bore that testimony to them. I am hoping that they don’t move too soon, but it could happen because Miguel has to get up WAY WAY WAY early to go to school and they are trying to move him closer to that.

The rest of the families have not been moving very quickly. We got 4 new investigators this week. 2 of them are a pair… how do you say… a couple. That might prove to be very good. They are really responsive and when we read the introduction to the Book of Mormon they were taking notes. They also understood it really quick which is really weird for here. Usually it’s hard to get them to understand what is the Book of Mormon? What are Nephites, Lamanites, Jaredites…. But they picked it up really quick. They are really sharp. We have high hopes with them. We have some other good contacts that with Suerte, with luck, we will be teaching them pretty soon. I am hoping to pull this area out of a hole finally ha ha.

Well, this week I have just learned a lot about how really valuable obedience is, doing the purificación missiónal or missionary purification. It’s an article by Elder Glen R. Cook of the Seventy. Basically there are little things that we slip on, like being up at 6:35, or other little things that we don’t obey that really do affect our ability to carry the spirit with us at all times. So I am working on that. It started with a fast, and then it’s a fast of 40 days where we fast from the things that we were doing that we shouldn’t be doing or the things that we weren’t doing that we should be doing. So I will let you guys know how that goes. Let’s see.. what else….

We met a New Yorker on our last P-Day. We were playing some Basketball and he says “HEY! GIT OVA HEAH” ha ha. So we went over there and his name is Allen. He is actually from the other area so we don’t get to teach him, but we have run into him twice now. He is this New Yorker that is living here in Colombia now, and he actually speaks some pretty darn good Spanish. It was just weird to hear a New York accent. They should be playing some Basketball with him this next week at the church on next p-day.

I was just reading some of your emails, that looks scary what happened up by Carol and Andy’s. (Note from Jessica: Jared’s aunt and uncle, Carol and Andy, live very near to where a major wildfire broke out on the mountain above their home at this time.) I hope and pray that everything goes well. I guess it’s dry there isn’t it? It’s kinda weird to imagine that the mountains aren’t covered in green and jungle and all of that there. It’s really different here. It’s been wet this week. It didn’t rain for a week which is really weird, and then it opened up again and we have had some good rain. In fact I think its raining right now.

I sent Michael a good letter for his birthday, but I wanted to wish him a Happy Birthday. Sweet 16 and I sent ya a good letter with my advice, if that is worth anything. Advice is free ha ha. And with my feelings. I also wanted to send Grandpa a Happy Birthday, I didn’t get a chance to get a letter off to him but if you guys would give him my thanks for everything that he has done for me…I would be very grateful. I sent him my condolences about Aunt Pat. That’s sure hard. But I sure honor and respect and revere that man. I haven’t done a whole lot of things right in my life, but one of them was visiting him every Sunday. Wouldn’t trade those days for all the world.

Well, this has been short and sweet and to the point. I hope you all have a good week and I will keep you posted and hopefully I will be sending baptismal pictures this week! So, I love you all and I will talk to you later. Chao Chao!


-Elder Lewis

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