Weekly Letter: August 1-7, 2011

para todos uds:

Without mentioning the ever-passing time, I will start to tell you about this week. There cannot be anything more that I can say that is not already said.

So this week was a challenging one for us. In my district the Elders in Viveros have had some troubles for three or four weeks in getting the success they wanted. Last week, they had the hardest week ever, and I made them the promise that the next week would be full of miracles...but I never thought that in the week I would be receiving similar comments from the Zone Leaders. In the whole week we had 1 new investigator...yeah, that would be O-N-E---one. And that is simply because she didn`t slam the door in our face and accepted that we could go back. She is really closed minded and doesn`t keep her commitments, so really we didn`t have any real new investigators. This week we tried hard to work with the members to give us references...one member did give us a really good reference...and he was a gringo! But then we found out that he was only here for vacations. We left him with an English and Spanish copy of the pamphlets for the first three lessons so that he could also look up the church we he gets back home in Wisconsin.

The other members mention people that they want us to teach, but they don´t know their address or anything. We keep reminding them, but to little avail. Sigh. Then, we invited 6 people to be baptized this week.......but only two accepted.....and then didn`t go to church so they didn`t get baptized. Sigh. The other four are members of a family that looked golden up until halfway through last week. My companion went there on exchanges and tried to invite them to be baptized, but they didn`t accept. And then when I went there on Friday to do the same, they looked like lions trying to attack us. I´ve never seen people get so worked up about baptism. No matter how many times I tried to explain we invite people to get baptized, they kept trying to give counterattacks, which is really frustrating because we weren`t even attacking in the first place. We ended up promising them that if they really wanted to know if this was the correct decision for them, that they would pray everyday and every night until Sunday(when we were going to go over there to go to church together), and that in the church they were going to feel the answer for certain. But when we went on Sunday at the hour that they told us to, nobody answered. We passed by later that day, and saw at least two members of that family, but then they hid from us and sent another person to tell us that nobody was home.

And then in church, Jose Luis got there without any sleep, and, being the first time at church, and being fast and testimony meeting, he was angry at the end. He kept saying, "These aren`t testimonies! This isn`t the love of Christ that I know!" I guess he was expecting what he had seen in very many churches where he has gone. We tried explaining everything afterward, and I think he was beginning to understand a little bit. But right now we`re going to see how it goes in our appointment with him at 6:00.

And then our golden investigator Lluvia was going to finally get married to her less-active member husband/boyfriend, so that she could finally be baptized. The husband got cold feet, and decided they would in a month. We offered to help economically if that was his concern....which it ended up being. But he being the head of the family, was not prepared to accept money to help get married. That is too bad because there is a member that marries people here pretty easily and just for 500 pesos (less than 50 U.S. dollars), however, they didn`t accept the offer.

Oh well....but I have faith that this week will be the week of miracles that we have hoped for. But we have to keep up the excitement because I´ve always said that discouragement is Satan´s first weapon, and it´s true, so we´ve got to work hard to not fall in that trap.

I love you all. Please, pray for us. We need help in this work!

Cariños,

Elder Blackham