Monday, July 1, 2013

Investigators, Rodents, and a Sheep!

Family,

This past week, I hit the 3 month mark! I still feel like I left the states liek last week, so time really is flying by.  One bit of sad news: My camera is busted. It got slammed in the door of a Trufi, and no longer works.  So I will have to wait until I can get a new one to send any pictures.

One random side note, this morning on the trufi ride up to Quillaquollo, a guy got on and sat in front of me holding a baby lamb! It was all black, and about the size of Puppy! It kept making the typical BAAA sound, and everyone on the trufi was laughing. I wish I could own one haha. There are so many animals here!

We are currently in the proccess of finding a new apartment.  One of the mission rules is each elder has to live in their own area.  Since the ward has 4 elders, the other elders live in our area in our same apartment.  Because of this, they are in the process of finding an apartment, and so are we.  I think we have found one, but it is not certain yet.  This is just a bit of whats going on with our week.

The missionary work has been very tough this week.  We have many investigators, but none of them want to commit to anything, won't read, and have not come to church.  This is one of the toughest things for me because we can't just do it for them.  Yes, we can read with them, and we can visit them before church to see if they will come, but we can't do it for them.  No matter what, they still have their agency, and if they don't really want it in their hearts, it won't happen.  Hopefully with time, we will be able to figure out how to help them, so they can make it to baptism.  Right now, we are doing our best but not having much success with them.  Occasionally I think about the other areas of the world, and realize that the people here are very soft hearted overall, and very willing to listen to what we have to say. And for this, I feel blessed to be here.

We do have one progressing investigator.  He is a 9 year old who we are teaching, and man is it different teaching a kid than it is teaching teenagers or adults.  The problem with kids is they have the attention span of a rodent.  We can hardly get though one topic of a lesson before he is spazzing out again and running all over the house. Because of this, each lesson takes more time, and more visits, but he is retaining the information, and wants to be baptized.  He likes it when we come over though also, and shows us all of his toys and stuff.  His baptism will be this month, probably more toward the end of the month.  Us teaching him also means we can visit the family often, which is good because they are just starting to come back to church again after a 10 year hiatus!

There is one family of less actives that we have visited also every week since I have been in the area, but would never come to church.  About 2 weeks ago, one of the daughters of the family, who is 20 years old, move back with the family from La Paz. She was studying there, but is finished for the semester.  The daughter is very active, and wants to serve a mission.  This is a huge blessing for the family.  The first week she was here, she brought her older sister, who has been less active for the better part of a year.  This last Sunday, her older sister came again, and also her younger brother.  Slowly but surely, they are beginning to come back to church.  We visit them every saturday in the evening and invite them to church.  Now, not everyone has come back to church, but the daughter, Maria, is very good about fetching all the members of the family when we come to visit them, to share a quick message and invite them to church the next day.  With time, I think they will all return to church again.  The spirit is always strong when we visit them, and even the family members who havent been to church in months end up a bit emotional.  

Hopefully by next week we will have found a new place to live, so we can spend more time on the work here.  I hope everyone has a good week! And if you haven't emailed me in a while I'd love to hear from you!

Èlder Potts

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