Hi guys!!
We had a normal week and
are doing well! Here is what we did:
1. We had 4 investigators
at church yesterday!!! Yay!! A nice lady we’ve been teaching for a few
weeks named Rut and 2 of her kids, and a 12 year old kid named Diego who, even
though he’s 12, is interested and reading and understanding -- his dad is inactive
but the bishop told us about him. Rut is a really cool mom -- she is super
patient with her kids and keeps the house really clean and is super chill. They
go to an Evangelica church kind of, but she’s really interested in finding out
if our message is true. We are excited to work with these guys and prepare them
to be baptized!
We were sad though because
the family we brought last week to church didn’t come. Usually when people go
to church, they’re a bit easier to teach and they’re more receptive, but with these
guys, not at all. We’ve had the hardest time getting a hold of them and finding
them, and they’re just lying to us and hiding :( So we are sad but we are going
to keep working to see what we can do.
2. Wendy! I just
wanted to share a nice experience we had with our recent convert, Wendy, who
was baptized about 2 months ago. We were visiting her and as part of the
lesson we asked her how she’d been blessed by going to church. She answered
with such a nice response, telling us that at first it had seemed like a lot to
her to go to church for 3 hours on Sundays, but that with time she’s seen great
changes in herself that have affected her whole family (who aren’t members).
She says that since she’s been going to church she’s been much more chill and
slow to get angry with her family, and as she has reacted to them more calmly
lately, they’ve been reacting more calmly too, and now everyone is chill and
happy :) They eat together more and spend more time together. Isn’t that
awesome?! She was a perfect investigator, we seriously had nothing to do with
her being so awesome, but it’s great to hear that we had a part in helping her
and her whole family to be happier.
3. Another sad story:
I feel like lately I’ve been writing a lot of stories about poverty and
things like that, and here’s another. This past week we went with our
investigator Rut to visit her friend who had just given birth the day before.
It was very sad :( There are different levels of poverty here, and you learn to
recognize the signs, but when you walk into a dark, one roomed home that is
completely empty, you know that they are the poorest, that they go to bed
hungry almost every night. This home of the mom, her 3 kids and brand new baby
girl, had a large bed, one small piece of furniture where you can put clothes,
and one chair. And that’s all. We get there and the kids are of course crowding
around the mom and baby. The oldest goes off to prepare the bottle (because the
mom wasn’t producing much milk yet for some reason), and was preparing just
sugar water because they couldn’t afford any milk right then. Can y’all
imagine? 2nd day of the baby’s life and you have nothing to feed it. Just sugar
water. And they don’t even have a little electric stove to heat the water --
they only have fire. This poor baby, apparently the 7 year old sister has been
doing chores for the neighbors the past few days to earn Q15 ($2.00) to go buy
the baby a few items of clothing. And they didn’t have any diapers. And I’m not
talking disposable diapers -- that’s a grand luxury that no one can afford
here. People here still mainly use cloth diapers! Quick diaper tangent: I asked
once and most babies here go through about 20 diapers per day. And remember, we
wash clothes and everything by hand. I’m going to get a little graphic here -- in
America babies have feeding schedules and only eat certain things and are
extremely regulated, so they go to the bathroom les and have more normal poop,
stuff like that. Well here, there is no schedule and babies get fed all kinds
of things and as a result have constant diarrhea. So that’s
20 nasty cloth diapers to clean every day. So, as much as we’ve all complained
about having to change diapers, we should all just count our blessings (remind
me of this when I have a kid, please). But anyways, it was very sad to see this
poor baby in such rough conditions on day 2, with nothing to eat. I know I say
it a lot, but America is so wonderful and so incredibly blessed.
Well, that’s pretty much
all for this past week. I know that the Gospel is true and that Christ is our
Savior. Being a missionary is a life-changing experience that I wouldn’t trade
for anything. I’m grateful for my testimony and for all of the blessings that
the Lord has given me.
Have a great week!!
Love,
Hermana Gilland
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