Faith In Every Footstep: Floresta

January 12, 2015

THis has been a very interesting week.

Last Monday: We played water balloon volleyball as a zone and ate ice cream. It was fun and yummy! We also made brownies for a less-active member because it was her birthday :) SO we went over that afternoon and visited with her family. Her pareja hung around and chatted a bit until we pulled out the scriptures. We are working on that :)

Tuesday: We had a district meeting. It was good :) This day we found someone whose name is Jose. We went by to find a less-active that we didn't know and he came out. SO we chatted, taught him a bit about the restoration and invited him to be baptized and he accepted! He had started going to a different church a couple weeks before and was really open and looking for the correct path. We were excited. The problem was that he worked and studied A LOT! THere wasn't a moment until saturday that we could visit him. Also that day we were practicing our whistling in the street. SO i did the whistle that guys so to girls in the street and i didn't realize there was a man about half a block in front of us and he heard it! He started to look around panicking and my companion and i just acted innocent while the man was trying to figure out who was whistling at him! It was way funny!

Wednesday: We visited with a member who had invited a friend over. Her friend had listened before and went to church once. But she is not married to her pareja. SHe was sweet but doesn't want to get married right now. Also i saw a shirt that said "This image is not available in your country." I just about died of laughter! ALso, i have a hatred of pigeons and they are everywhere here! So i like to torment them. I saw a little one and i started to chase it and it started running away, then it opened it's wings to fly away, but instead it fell head-first into the sidewalk. IT WAS SO FUNNY. That night we called Jose and he said he had read half of the pamphlet we left him and he said he wanted to go to church and be baptized. We were excited! He hadn't prayed so we committed him to pray about it.

Thursday: We had weekly planning. IT was good. Made a organized list of all the active and less-active members. That afternoon we visited with a family that had recently re-activated. We also visited with a part-member family. THey aren't married and the mom is a member. The dad isn't She reactivated about a year ago and he started going to church with her. He doesn't want to commit to anything yet. He keeps want to do it all "Later" so we talked about the importance of acting "NOW". It was a good lesson and the fed us yummy food :) We also went by Jose's house and left him a pamphlet. We tried to call him but he didn't answer so we left him a message and he sent us a message saying he got the pamphlet and was reading. SO we were happy.

Friday: We decided to explore another part of our area. We found another part-member family. The husband wasn't there and the son-in-law didn't want to listen. BUt we have an appointment to visit again and meet the husband this week. On our way bach in the collectivo there was a short little guy next to me with red hair. SO i tried to say to my companon in a quick hushed voice in english "Hermana! He's a leprechaun!" But i said it so quick and hushed that she had a hard time understanding me. WE got a good laugh afterwards when i explained to her what i was trying to say. THis day we couldn't get a hold of jose :(

Saturday: We visited a less-active member. She wants to reactivate but "Later" THat seems to be the problem here. Nobody wants to act now. SO we had been sharing the scrip´ture in The Book of Mormon in Alma 34:31-34 which says:

31 Yea, I would that ye would come forth and harden not your hearts any longer; for behold, now is the time and the day of your salvation; and therefore, if ye will repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.

32 For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meetGod; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.

33 And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so manywitnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinatethe day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life,which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do notimprove our time while in this life, then cometh the night ofdarkness wherein there can be no labor performed.

34 Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that Iwill repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this;for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the timethat ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power topossess your body in that eternal world.

But seriously it is WAY important that we do not dealy or hesitate. We need to do what we know is right and act NOW because we never know when is our last day. Also that night we visited a less-active member that made us pizza. It was yummy. We have a lot in common for example we are both DIE-HARD Pride and prejudice fans, we both LOVE to read, and we both prefer pizza WITHOUT tomato sauce. She really loves us but she doesn't want to pray or read the book of mormon or go to church or anything. She really loves her neices and nephews so we shared in 3 Nefi 14:9-10 and realted her relationship with her sobrinos to her relationship with GOd. It was good. I hope we can help her.

Sunday: We got up and got ready to church and went by to bring jose to church we hadn't been able to communicate with him for 2 days but we decided to try anyways. On our way i felt my arm bump into someone, so i said sorry and stepped aside so they could pass us when this guy stepped in front of us and asked us where the floresta train station was. I was a little flustered and told him it was in the other direction. THe next question was "And what do i have to do to go out with you two." Uh I had a little internal freak out and was like "NO! We are missionaries and we don´t date!" ANd basically shoved the pass-along card with the direction of the church in his face and tried to get away. But then he started walking with us. AHHH! I wanted to die! HE started to talk about cualquier cosa and i just wanted him to go away. I don´t like it when people put me in situations like that! HE walked with us until we got to JOse´s house, and he wouldn´t go away! He had just come back from being in a bar all night. He wasn´t super drunk but i smelled alcohol. While we were knocking Jose´s door he asked us if he could go to church. We couldn´t tell him no and jose hadn't answered his door. SO we went to church with this guy (his name is christian) On the way he asked us what we do on the weekends, Where we lived, what our names were, if we drank alcohol, etc. Of course we told him that we DON´T go out on the weekends and we DON´T drink alcohol and we couldn´t tell him our names or adress. It was interesting but when we got to the church we dropped hime off in the priesthood calss and hid in the bathroom frantically asking the elders when they were gonna get here. about 30 minutes later he told us he was tired and wanted to go home, so he just left. It was seriously a sigh of relief. We felt so uncomfortable with him. He is a child of GOd too but he is a child of god that came from being in a bar all night and didn´t have the right intentions..... ALso that afternoon we went to find a former investigator and out came his dad. He was chewing cocaine. So we gave him the invitation to church and then he started to lecture us on how his son goes to church but doesn´t respect him as his father and how important it is to respect yuor parents (don´t forget he was chewing COCAINE!) and before we left he gave my companion a Big Slobbery kiss on her hand. I WAS DYING OF LAUGHTER!!!!

Oh and I can´t forget what happened to us this morning! We decided to take out the trash and throw away our food because the whole week the had been randomly cutting off the lights (That tends to happen durin the summer in capital) SO our food went bad and it stunk. SO we went to take the trash out when we heard a Huge "BANG!" My heart dropped. A gust of wind had slammed the door shut. YOu need to understand that the doors here are different. YOu can´t open the door from the outside without the key. And our keys were inside. SO we thought we would call our zone leaders... but our phone also was inside. So we went downstairs to see if the guy in charge of the building could help us out (Oh, and we didn´t have shoes on....)so we were with him trying to jimmy it open but we couldn´t so we had to call a locksmith. It was quite the adventure.

ANd now here i am :) Enjoying the mission like always. It is seriously the BEST to be serving the lord and i DON¨T WANT IT TO END :( BUt everything happens in the LOrd´s timing for a reason :)

Love you all!

Hermana Allison Scarlett