Some are Sowers

Status update.

Last week we had transfers aaaaannnnnndddddddd...... nothing happened.  Hna. Aviles and I will be staying together for the next 6 weeks here in Azteca.  Which I´m happy about.  We make a pretty good team and have lots of plans for this next transfer.  We´re finding lots of new people to teach and now only need to sift through them all to see who really is going to progress.  Two new Hnas arrived last Monday as well to open area in Azteca 2.  We officially split the area and they started contacting to find new people to teach...  They had about 3 days to work before one of them became sick with the chicken pox and now they have to stay locked up in their apartment for who knows how long.  A missionary's nightmare.  So we´re currently trying to figure out how we might be able to go on divisions so their area doesn´t sit there and collect dust.  De seguro I can´t get to close to the Hna. because I´ve never had Chicken Pox and even though I´ve got the shots and everything, it´s still possible to catch it.  It´s an awkward situation all together.

But moving on from that.  It´s time to get spiritual.

As many of my dedicated followers may remember, I hit a moment un poquito dificil in my second area and about in the middle of my mission.  I was training, I was contacting, I was teaching, but nothing seemed to be going right.  No one was progressing towards the waters of baptism and honestly, I felt a little bit like nothing that I was doing worked.

One day, as we climbed one of the many hills in our area, we passed by a man cleaning his front yard.  La verdad, I was going to keep walking, but something told me to talk to him, so I did.  It was awkward, just like every good contact, but we discovered that he lived several years in Utah before getting deported to Mexico.  There he came in contact with the church.  Never listened to the missionaries, but heard a lot about our beliefs.  Obviously, we invited him to church the next day and to hear our lessons.  And while making fun of my Spanish, he told us that although he wouldn´t be able to receive us in his house, nos veremos alli in la capilla (meet in the church).  Contact completed.

He never showed up at church.

And for the rest of the time that I served in Las Fuentes, I never saw him again.

Flash-forward to 2 months ago.  Hna. Pacheco and I were siting on a bus, leaving Tijuana and heading to our new areas in Ensenada.  Excited to see each other again, we began to relate everything that happened since the end of her training.

She told me that one Sunday, as she and her companion walked into the church, they found Bendito (the contact) sitting in the back row.  To make a long conversion short, they began to talk and he accepted an appointment for them to teach him, which lead to another and another.  Which eventually lead to him being baptized and then joining the missionaries to share his testimony with other investigators.  Now he has the priesthood and is miembro fiel.

I nearly cried when she told me that.

Every effort is worth it.

P.S.  Some cholos unknowingly vandalized a wall with Lehi´s Dream.  Clearly descriptive es the arbol de la vida, the great and abdominal building, and Lehi with the most precious of all fruits.