A Sure Testimony, Exercise, and Obedience

This week, we finally have a promising investigator that has come to church and has a fecha! Our progressing investigator is Martin. He has been coming to church for a year and a half to help his daughter, Edith (who is the wife of one of the counselors in the stake presidency), with her kids. He has had lots of different missionaries come to his house in the past, but he has never been baptized. We had our second lesson with him last night, and we prayed that the spirit would guide the lesson. He really opened up to us, and we found out that even though he has been to church and had had lots of missionaries visit him, he really didn't know the answers to some of the basic questions in lesson 1 and that he really didn't understand the lessons. He told us that he wanted to be baptized! He wants to go through all the lessons again and be really sure, and we can only meet with him once a week because of his work, so his fecha is Oct 26. We're going to see if we can have him feel ready before then, but for now that is the date he accepted.

This week, I also learned the importance of making sure your investigators have a testimony of the gospel and even a basic understanding of the gospel. We taught a less active this week that is attending a Jehovah's Witness church. We asked her if she had a testimony of the Book of Mormon, and from that we found out that she didn't really know what the book was, or who Joseph Smith really was. She told us she had been baptized because she really liked the Elders that came and visited her, and that after they left she decided to go to another church. It was such a sad experience, and it was an experience for me that I know that we need to really make sure our investigators have the right motives for being baptized.

Preparing the completos.

The pictures are all from an activity that our zone had, eating completos, which is pretty much a beefed up hot dog thing that they eat in Chile. It was pretty yummy. Also, this is the conference we had with President Archibald after the zone completed it's monthly goal for baptisms.

Completos waiting to be assembled.

We started running in the mornings for exercise now...I have been super nervous to go running ever since I got here because there are literally dogs everywhere...there is not a single street corner that doesn't have at least 3 wild dogs roaming around. I've seen people get chased, nearly bit, and I have been barked at several times just for minding my own business and walking by. I am terrified of these dogs! But anyway, Hermana Larsen convinced me to go to the park one morning and just walk around. We got out to the park, and I didn't see any dogs really near by, and I have really missed running, so I was like, 'You want to run?' So, ya. Now we try to go running in the park for our exercise in the mornings! I am so glad to get back to running! Such a stress relief!

Some of the Elders in our Zone enjoying the
completos.

Anyway, last Thursday we had a mission conference with Elder Ucede of the Seventy. It was really good, and we learned lots of things we can improve on. We were told that we really needed to be exactly obedient and follow step for step, word for word, what is in Preach My Gospel. So to be more obedient, that is one of the reasons we started to exercise in the mornings (thus the running). We also learned that it is really important for everyone in the mission to know two languages. He really got after everyone who didn't want to learn English while they're serving. I really hope I can have a latina companion while I am here and that I can help her learn some English!

Well, we find out today if we get transfered tomorrow or not. So far, our zone leaders haven't told us anything. I really hope I can stay here with Hermana Larsen because we feel like we are finally starting to get our area up and going. We have also been looking for apartments, but everything we found was too expensive and big. We'll have to keep looking, but for now we're staying in our garage.