Dear Family,
I hope you all liked the photos that
I sent. Well this week was super crazy! It was pretty normal until the very
end. This weekend we had our district conference. It is sort of like a stake
conference, but since we are a district, not a stake, the mission president
shows up and it really good. We had quite a few people from our branch come and
it was a very spiritual meeting. The crazy part was that we had to go sit on
the grass for a big part of it and watch it on a TV. This reminded me of how at
home they broadcast stake conference to other areas, but in this case, we were
just out on the front lawn of the church. Surprisingly, most of the talks were
about the Book of Mormon. And the best part was that we had two investigators
there!!!! I loved it!
We are working with one investigator
named S. She is my age, but has an 8-month-old child and a husband. She’s super
cool, though we have only visited her like four times. The first two times
everything looked good and she seemed like a golden investigator. She said she
was willing to have us over whenever and that she would read all the material
that we had. But then the second visit, she hit us with a bomb! She said that
she didn’t believe in God!!! Now I know it’s normal in other countries to run into
people who don’t believe in God or Jesus, but up until now, I have only met two
Dominicans that don’t believe in God. Everybody here believes in God. This
country has the freaking Bible on its flag, with a scripture below it as its motto.
So this was a little strange to meet her, but we started talking and asked what
made her conclude that there was no God and how she felt about her purpose here
with that belief. Then we testified and it was a very spiritual experience
because it was the first time testifying of God that I really felt it. I really
got an understanding of how great it is to know that there is a God; that our
lives have purpose and that He loves us. Anyway, I could tell that she felt it
as well, because she started staring at her child for a while and said, “I really
want that best for my son,” and then asked us when we could come back and if
she could offer the final prayer. The next time that we came back it was a
short visit, but it was in the park over by her house. My comp was playing with
the baby a bit and I felt impressed to ask S about her prayers. I identified a
big problem in her testimony because when she used to pray, she would ask for things
and wait for a miracle. Also she has always had a problem trusting people,
especially people she doesn’t know. (for example- God!) So I challenged her
to kneel each night and to talk to God.
Not to focus on asking for stuff or giving thinks, but to just tell God about
her day and her plans and how she felt. Anyway, my challenge was definitely
inspired because she loved the idea, she called it her diary with God. The next
lesson I asked her to tell me about the adventures that she has had these last
couple days. She was like, “Well, my work adventures have gone good, and my
home adventures are good, and my spiritual adventures have gone really well.” So
that was the key. She said the first day she forgot to pray and she said she
felt really guilty for not doing it. She said, “I promised that I would talk to
Him and I forgot”, so then she said a prayer in the middle of work and she told
God she would talk to him later. Haha. So I’m not sure if she will really
progress, but I am trying my best to help her. She is one of those
investigators where you can really see her potential. I want her to progress,
but it was super cool because she followed up on her commitment and came to the
district conference.
We also had this weird funny guy
named F show up. He’s a little weird, like he lives his life wandering around San
Juan visiting friends, but he is super good with commitments and if you tell
him when you’re going to show up, he will be there waiting! So he also
showed up to the conference with a half-liter of chocolate milk. It was quite
the sight!
Then Monday we had our Christmas
zone conference that was super amazing. We had all of the elders in our zone
here in the house for a good 4 days straight with all of the conferences. There
are 14 elders in the zone, so it kind of sucked having 14 elders in one
house... you can only imagine how dirty it got!! But then we woke up at 5:00 in
the morning on Monday and started getting ready to leave for the town of Azua
for the zone conference. It was tons of fun because I got to see a bunch of
friends there. At the conference we got this awesome presentation about the
steps of Jesus' life and it was a very cool moment with President Knuckles. Then
during the Christmas broadcast I was talking with Elder A about different
doctrine and studying and it was a really great talk! He’s this cool elder from
California that was in my first zone. Then the really fun part is that we
each got assigned a skit from the book of Mormon and you had to act it out
weaving in funny missionary jokes and stuff like that. So we had Ammon and I
was a guy named Aaron for the first scene, then a sheep at the end, but it was
really, really funny! We had a great time and we also got a bunch of food. Rice
and chicken- I loved it! But yeah, that was my week. Hope you all
had a fun week and I’ll see you next week.
Love,
Elder Stark
No comments:
Post a Comment