Weekly Letter: April 12-17, 2011

para todos uds:

This week has been great. We are still so far away from reaching all the goals that we want to meet. However, I feel like the work is going forward at a really rapid pace. The Independencia Ward is working really hard to help us reach the goal that we have in mind to baptize 7 in April....however, this will be very difficult, because only one investigator went to church this week, and she still has to be married before she can get baptized. (and we´ve had some complications with that).

However, we feel like this area is progressing very well. We are never satisfied, but we feel like we´ve gotten a good feel about how to work in this area. We have literally had a miracle in the way the work has progressed in this last change. Elder Rosales and I have been looking at the numbers that we´ve had since the beginning of the change. We´ve had the goal as a mission that every companionship have 30 lessons a week. Which is more than 4 a day. The first week we had 13. However, the last two weeks have changed miraculously. Last week we had 24, and this week we had 26. Our daily goals for lessons changed from 4 to 6. If our appointments hadn´t fallen through on Tuesday and if we had had a better Sunday, we would have probably passed our goal.

Really, I feel so fortunate that we have been able to work some miracles in this area. The recent converts that Elder Perez and I baptized are so strong in the church that I can literally see them getting callings in the church really soon. We have also found some great new people here in this area. Israfil and Aracely only have to get married so she can get baptized and he can receive the priesthood. They´ve already started to give us references(and really good ones too), and they just barely got here.

We have also been blessed to see the progress of good investigators like Enrique Guerra, who will be able to go to church the first time this week with his family. He has been feasting on our lessons. He loves learning about the gospel because it makes sense. He always says that he is grateful that we found him.(he was street contact in front of the church) So yeah, that´s way cool.

We also have been blessed to find a new investigator this week. His name is Miguel Torres, and he might just be the miracle of this week...or even the change. We knocked on his door, and he answered. I asked him if he would be interested in the message we share, and he told us "How can I tell you if I´m interested if I haven´t heard anything about it?" So we passed by the next day, and had a powerful first lesson. He told us that he just felt astonished at the end, and couldn´t thank us enough for coming. He asked us what he could do. He wanted us to come by again...and we didn´t refuse. We invited him to go onto Mormon.org, and to church on Sunday. He didn´t show up on Sunday, but when we talked to him later that day he told us that his daughter got sick and had to take her to the doctor in the morning. But then he said he read everything from the site....even all the history of the church...and loved it!

We taught Lesson 2, and he again told us how astonished he was by the truth of it. He wants to invite his wife and daughter to be part of the lessons too, but his daughter is really young, so it´s complicated.

Anyway, I´ve got to go now because time is up. Thanks for the prayers and the support. We really are seeing fruits here in Independencia!

Cariños,

Elder Blackham