Update on the Family Milian

Hey everyone!!

So this week was pretty great! We are so excited because we had 4 people in church!!! Here is what we did this week:

1. 4 Investigators in church!!!  The 4 people we had were the wife of the family I mentioned last week, a guy named Carlos who came to conference a few weeks ago, and a lady named Mildrid and her daughter. We were really excited. We had a whole lot, like 12ish, people who were "maybe" going to come but who weren't like super positive, but all the ones we were really hoping for came.  They are all really special people and we are hoping to put some baptismal dates this week. 

2. Hermana Mildrid!  We have been teaching this lady for a few weeks, and sometimes her 2 daughters. She is just a really special lady. Another missionary met her at her work and gave us her phone number. She is really Evangelica, but we are seeing miracles with her. We always have really spiritual lessons with her, and last week, we went and talked a lot about how important it is to get an answer to the question "which church is the true church?" We ended our lesson and asked which one of us she wanted to pray, since she had said the opening prayer, but she said that she wanted to pray and said such a sweet prayer, pleading with the Lord for an answer to the question. After the prayer, we just sat in silence for a few moments, and then a wonderful feeling came over her, and she just told us how great she felt. And we asked her if she wanted to feel that feeling always, and she said yes, and we explained to her how she could, through baptism. She is just so sweet and we are so happy that she went to church. She is a really really special lady and the Lord loves her so much! Ahh what a privilege to know people like her. 

3. Update on the Family Milián:  Well, the wife went to church on Sunday with her little son. They are a really special family, and its just been really rough for them because they have been having really hard financial times. The husband had to work. We tried really hard to teach about the power of obedience and the importance of going to church on Sunday, but hes not quite there yet. The wife wanted to go to church but on Sunday morning was really worried about their financial troubles and wanted to go look for solutions instead of going to church, but we told her that shed be able to find help at the church and that shed feel better if she came with us, and so she did, and she talked to one of the members who is a doctor, about her kid who is sick, and then the bishop talked to her for a long time and is going to help her find a job. So she was so happy that she came with us, and we are excited to help them change their lives and hopefully get baptized in a few weeks. 

So that's pretty much what we've got going on these days here. Things are really looking up, we have lots of great people we are working with. I hope that y'all all have a great week and thank you all so much for your support!

Love, Hermana Gilland

We did it all - had a baptism, found some families, and read the entire BOM!

Happy Easter everyone!!

I hope that y'alls Easter weekends were great. We had an awesome week and saw lots of miracles! Wow! This week was "Holy Week", or "Semana Santa", the biggest holiday week of the year, and so we weren't allowed to leave and work Thursday thru Saturday. But despite that we had a very successful week and are so grateful to Heavenly Father.

1.  So, remember that I said last week that y'all should expect to hear about a beautiful family that we would be teaching this week? Well the Lord found them for us! The biggest miracle is familia Milian. I'm still just blown away. They're a really young, cute couple with a little baby boy, and we just contacted them in a tuk tuk (the little tiny taxis we get around in), the dad is a tuk tuk driver and the mom and kid were riding with him. We contacted them right before Semana Santa and knew that we wouldn't be able to have a lesson with them all week, so we went out on a limb a little bit and invited them to church that Sunday. Shockingly they seemed interested, and we got their info and said wed call them Saturday to make sure they could still come. Maybe I'm just a big doubter, but let me tell you, it NEVER happens that you contact a WHOLE FAMILY, invite them to church without even really talking to them, they actually seem interested, and then that ACTUALLY GO, OK, that never ever happens...but it happened!!! We called Saturday and the husband was happy and said that they were planning on going. I was still very doubtful, whats the catch with these guys? We went and picked them up Sunday morning and they were getting ready to go, the mom wore a cute skirt and the dad wore a nice polo and his nice shoes, and they were just so adorable. And then we all went to church together! It was so awesome -- 100% pure miracle. They liked church and say that they want to come next week. Were going with them tonight and are so excited to challenge them to get baptized! Agh! I cant even explain how excited and shocked I am. Wow! We are sooooo happy! So that was our first family this week :)

2. The 2ND family we found, familia Maldonaldo, is really awesome too.  They're also a young couple with 2 young boys, and they're super cute. We just randomly contacted them and had a lesson with them on Tuesday and we talked about eternal families and baptism, and they're pretty interested. They couldn't go to church because they went out of town for the holiday weekend, so we are hopeful that next week they'll come with us. HnaSchroeder and I have been praying and hunting so hard for families, and we are so completely grateful for the 2 beautiful families that we were able to find this week, even though we only could work 2 days of the week because of Semana Santa. Just some huge giant miracles!!

3. Another super awesome thing that happened this week was Gerardo's baptism!  (See picture below)  I'm sure I've already written about him, but he is this young man who was already baptized a few years ago but never confirmed because he never returned to the church, so he had to be baptized again. Even though hes only 17 he is really great. In his baptismal interview he asked the Elder how he could start preparing to go on a mission! Cool right! He is just an exceptional kid and we were really blessed to have had a chance to work with him. It was also exciting because it was my comps first baptism! So it was special. The service went surprisingly smooth and he was successfully confirmed on Sunday. Yay!

4. So wanna know what we did during Semana Santa when we weren't allowed to work? As a zone (there are 18 of us in the zone), we read the ENTIRE Book of Mormon out loud! Agh! We did it in about 27 hours spread out over 2.5 days. I'm not going to lie to y'all, I didn't really enjoy myself. It was kind of like torture ha-ha. The entire mission did it actually, we were competing for some prize, I don't even know what. Ha-ha gosh. I mean, its kind of cool to say that we did that. And my understanding of the Book of Mormon chronology is much better. And I found lots of things I want to go back and study later. But I'm definitely never doing that again, ever. Yikes. 

So that was pretty much our week. We did it all.......... had a baptism, found some families, and read the entire Book of Mormon. We are really seeing the Lord working miracles in our area right now. Obviously Heavenly Father really wants these families to find the truth, and we only hope and pray that we can be sufficient instruments in His hands right now with them. The 2 families and some others that we are working with right now are super special. We are so grateful for what we have right now. I just know that this is Gods work. There's no way that its not. Experiences like these are when the difficult times totally pay off, its all totally worth it. I love being a missionary and I am learning soooo much. I love the Gospel and I know that it is true. I know that we have the one true church of Jesus Christ on the earth today, and that everyone should hear about it! Everyone needs to be a part of the true church. Thank you all again for your support and prayers, we cant do much without them. Have a fantastic week!!!

Love, Hermana Gilland