February 9, 2015- Week 5 in Ometoxtla!

Hola!

This week was pretty good :) On Monday, it was Guillermina's birthday! We bought her a little cake and had a little party. We still don't know if she's going to get baptized soon...but we know that she's definitely thinking about it more. The other investigators that we have...well they're not really investigators anymore. None of them want to progress anymore. :( But, we're looking for new investigators and, we had the blessing of finding one yesterday! He's name is Cesar, and he is the husband of an less-active. He listened to missionaries about 3 years ago, but decided to stop investigating. But, I think we were able to win the family over yesterday, and now they love us! And he told us that he would like to learn more, just so they can teach their daughters more about God. We'll see how it goes!

The best part of the week was Saturday night, at 9:00, when the 1st counselor in the bishopric (who knows how to spell that??) came and informed us that he forgot to tell us that we were going to speak in church! We did our best to prepare that night (because church starts at 8) and hopefully it turned out ok! I really liked the topic they gave me: how to achieve eternal goals. It made me think of PPI's with my dad, Personal Progress, and the importance of our daily decisions. I absolutely love goals :) They're the best.

On Wednesday, we had a great zone conference! One of the zone leaders, Elder Masapanta, talked to us about faith. More than anything, he mentioned 6 things that destoy our faith. They are:

1. Doubt

2. Discouragement

3. Distractions

4. Lack of Diligence

5. Disobedience

6. Unbelief

I think as missionaries, it's easy to fall into one or more of these things. But it really helped me to understand that our attitudes are everything. When we aren't optimisic, we weaken our faith. When we focus on unimportant things, we weaken our faith. When we don't have an attitude of obedience, we weaken our faith. When we stop believing that we can change, that the investigators will change, that the area can change, etc., we weaken our faith. And, well, I needed to see this list and figure out how to keep from falling into one of these habits. A friend asked me this week, "What do you do to keep motivated?" And my answer is... increase your faith. Do everything you can to keep your faith growing, and the motivation will come. Maybe you won't see a lot of "fruits" from your labor, but you'll find the strengeth to keep going anyway. 

For example: After a long week of fallen appointments, "for the last time, no"´s, and crazy hot afternoons and freezing nights, my companion and I found ourselves with one of our "last hopes", a 70 year old man named Florentino. We had contacted him a few weeks ago, and were finally able to see him again. We sat outside his house to talk to him, or rather, to listen to him for almost an hour as he told us about his life. The sun was scorching hot, I kept sitting back into a wall of cactuses, and when we asked if we could come back again to share our message, he said something like, "Thank you, but I think we'll just leave it how it is." AKA: No. Before, I probably would've been upset, disappointed, without desires to keep searching... but we told him thank you, then went and contacted another person a little ways down the road. "Satan will always try to give you reasons to give up, but you have to show him that he shouldn't even bother, that you trust in God too much to give up." My best friend told me that once, and it's what I always remember when things get a little tough.

This week, I also had the blessing of having intercambios with Hermana Condé :) She came to our area, and we had a great time. We helped an hermana wash clothes by hand for 2 hours, we had a great lesson with Guillermina (she almost accepted the baptismal commitment!) and shared our mission stories :) She's a super positive and funny person, and I really enjoyed our day together.

It's gonna be a great week! I love all of you so much! Thank you for your love and prayers :) Until next week!

Love always,

Hermana Smith

Photo: Happy Birthday to Guillermina :)