Week 47 Feliz Ano Nuevo

I hope you´ve all enjoyed the New Year and hope this following year shall be awesome for you all. I´ve been eating way too much food this week and feel somewhat akin to a balloon. I was already bloated from eating at a members home Saturday night. Then yesterday, Elder Rivero made us Tacos....So yea, food. 

Elder Rivero's Tacos

(Elder Oliveira and I eating at members house new years eve)

I´ll admit I have been a bit trunky at times but nevertheless the Lord has been merciful and I´ve had some great experiences. So this week in Los Palmares we contacted a reference, his name is Ruben. Come to find out he has received different missionaries for two or three years and has at different points in time attended church regularly. We came to his home and he basically asked us when he can be baptized. It sounds like he´s had a rough time especially recently. His mother passed away in December and kinda shook him, I´m not sure but perhaps it´s one of the reasons why at last he has decided to be Baptized. It was a pretty cool moment.

I had another experience this week on a companionship exchange with Elder Oliveira. We were in La Victoria and went to visit Samy, we´ve been working with Samy for a long time but he has become touchy when we talk about Baptism. It´s been a frustration for me because he´s very prepared and we´ve invited him many times but he just says that he doesn´t feel ready. So there we were, Elder Oliveira and I, and near the lessons closure we brought it back to baptism. At first the same thing happened, Samy started to close up like he´d done before. I began to back off, thinking we are beating a dead horse here, but then Elder Oliveira told Samy how sometimes youth don´t want to join the church because they think they can´t dance or listen to music, stuff like that. All of a sudden it was a light bulb went on above Samy´s head and he responded that´s exactly it. We proceeded to explain to him that those sort of things he could still do, we invited him to write down a list of all the things he´s worried about, so when we come back we can settle his concerns. And he accepted a date for the 14th of this month. It was awesome because at last I think that Samy will at last be entering the waters of Baptism, I am thankful that Elder Oliveira was there and was listening, when I´d almost thrown the towel in, He asked the right question when I thought that´d I´d asked them all, perhaps the Lord was giving me a lesson in the importance of listening. I am thankful for the Lords many tender mercies, like giving my companion a nudge 

Once again Happy New year, I hope you all have an awesome week and a wonderful new year of twenty seventeen, may God bless you in your righteous endeavors.  

Love Elder Call