This week, I learned how important it is to have members in the lessons. When we have a member present, especially one that can be a hermamiento, we can see a difference in how the investigators and menos activos respond to the compromisos. They are much more likely to complete their compromisos. When a member testifies of how a doctrine or commandment has blessed their life, or even just bear their testimony of Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon, there is a lot of power and the spirit is so strong. Having a member in lessons is much more powerful.
I also learned that we really don't know who will be baptized after we first meet them. I had the opportunity to go back to El Olivar with Hermana Solis for exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders. Of the people that I met while I was there, four of them had been baptized, one of which I helped find when I was there a few months ago. Those people that we had dropped or had thought wouldn't progess had made the changes necessary in their lives to be baptized, and it was really amazing for me to see the difference it had made in their lives. Sometimes we really won't know who will change their lives to live in accordance with the gospel, so we have to work hard with every single one of our investigators.
Last Monday, we had a pretty crazy day. We were enjoying our normal Preparation day activites, playing games with the zone, eating food, and going shopping. We got back to our apartment at about 5:00, and saw that we had missed two calls from Pres. Archibald and one from Hermana Archibald! We called back and he asked us to come in for an interview in an hour. We quickly changed and hopped on a bus to get to Metro.
We had a really good, long interview with Pres. Archibald. He has been calling in everyone who hasn't had a baptism since he arrived in the field. Hermana Larsen and I are both on his list, and so he went over our area with us, and we talked about some of the things we can change and improve on in order to help our area progress. He gave us some really great advice and showed us some of the resources that we didn't know we had to help us find part member families. These next couple of weeks, he's going to be talking with the leaders in our stake and ward, and making changes in the boundaries of our area. It will be super exciting to see some of the changes that will be made, and we are going to be focusing even more on part member families in order to help us find people to teach.
I've decided that on Halloween I will eat candy to celebrate! Oh, I do miss all the yummy fall soups, desserts, and carving pumpkins, but I'll get to see how they celebrate here. Peruvian food is really good, but I would kill for some homemade cheese and broccoli soup with pumpkin pie for dessert! On the other hand, it's getting hot here and soup doesn't really sound good all the time, so I guess I can wait.
One thing about it warming up and the sun coming out is that I am definitely getting tanner and my hair lighter. People here are crazy about my blond hair. They really like to akwardly stare when I walk by, so that's kind of fun. One good thing did come from my hair, though. When I was on exchanges with Hermana Solis back in El Olivar last Friday, we were walking through her area when we saw some people staring at us from the second floor of a house. Hermana Solis decided we should contact them. They are super nice and want to hear more about the Gospel. We asked why they were staring at us and they said it was because of my hair! So maybe I can use my blonde hair to help us contact people...we'll see!
Anyways, lots of really fun stuff for Halloween! I totally made decorations and I am going to eat lots of candy for Halloween. Hermana Larsen and I decided that we're going to swich our nametags and be each other for part of the day Halloween. It will be fun!
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