Dear Friends and Family,
Thanks so much for all of the support and love!! Your prayers are being answered in my area.
Moroni 7:33 And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me. (from Mom)(sorry you'll have to search it yourself, unless my mom is nice enough to copy and paste it for me:) We've been sharing this scripture with all of the members. Faith is the spark that sets everything in motion. Expedient means convenient or advantageous, and you better believe that it is advantageous unto Christ for you to spread the gospel. Lesson learned: You most definitely can do missionary work even if all you've got is faith. As President Henrie would most certainly say, Go, and Do.
What an awesome week! First up, Ricardo. We just taught Ricardo for the 2nd time since I've been in the area yesterday. He also made it to church! We are extremely stern as a companionship. Sometimes me toca to be the good cop. I'm sure any of my former companions would have a hard time believing I'm ever the good cop, but seriously, Hermana Figueroa and I are very stern. What can I say? Now he's progressing. Anyway, last night we taught him the Word of Wisdom, and the only thing he doesn't do more or less on a regular basis is drink tea. It might be a long road, or he might never touch any drugs, alchohol, tobacco, or coffee again. I have the faith for the latter:) Please pray for it to be that way as well. If everything goes as planned, Ricardo will be baptized in September.
Luisa is almost 8 and neither of her parents are baptized yet or even investigating, but her grandma takes her to church, and she's about to be baptized. She's SO CUTE! She reminds me of my sisters, which is to say, I love her so much.
First Day we knock on Doris's door and set a baptism date with her. I love being a missionary!
Another time Hna Figueroa taught the whole lesson one and extended the baptismal invitation while I was talking to Carlos who claims he's batman. What can I say? She's on fire!!
We walked into a non-progressing part member family's home where the Christian church lady already was. Spirit whispered: "No man can serve two masters." Boldest message I think I've ever shared. Commitment: Family council to choose which church because they can't go to both. Hopefully the Spirit wins out. I still can't believe we did that.
Different non-progressing part member family, we literally were like, "did you know you're an investigator? do you know what we expect from investigators? are you going to read or what?" He downloaded the app and I think things are about to start moving there too:)
We've been trying this Book of Mormon Challenge where we invite everyone we meet to open to any page and read any part and look for something beautiful about God and Jesus Christ. One girl opened up to Mosiah 3 and I had completely forgotten about that part. It was like hearing it for the first time, which she was, and it was SO POWERFUL (poderoso). We did it with this other YSA girl who doesn't actually live in the mission, but she started with that, heard the restoration, said she agreed with it more than any other religion she's learned about, and set a church tour! What!!? Love it.
Judith is almost 15 which is really crazy for me because so is Meredith and she's way too old to be the same age as Meredith, but asi es la vida. She loves learning about the gospel and going to church. She investigated and wanted to be baptized 2 years ago, and her mom wouldn't let her be baptized, but we're going to try again now that she's older and we walked with her to church yesterday. It was awesome!!
Hermana Figueroa is so awesome. I love her so much!! We have 3 past wards in common and I feel like I can just be myself and she laughs and gets me. I love it. She's from VA close to DC and I love talking about east coast cities with her. We have no shortage of conversation, and even if we do, it's comfortable silence:)
I love being a missionary! Thanks again for all of your love! Love you all!
Love,
Hermana Sleight
Hermana Figueroa, the new companion, look how little she is!
