Back to the Motherland: Tip of the Iceberg (September 8, 2014)

Hola familia y amigos!

Como estan?! I had a really good week! We worked really hard and reached ALL of our goals, which doesn't happen too often. It was kinda a week of miracles (again). 2 cool things happened.

First of all, we have these two men we're teaching who are really good friends and live right across the street from each other, Raul and Mario. They're always together. We haven't been able to see them for awhile, so we told them we were stopping by. They said they were drinking cervesa (beer). We joke about that a lot, so we thought they were joking. We show up and turns out that they actually were drinking together... We were so disappointed. We walk up and ask them what the heck were they doing. They were really embarrassed. We just talked to them about what they were really going through and were able to be there at just the right moment. We asked them if they had any more. They avoided the question, so we asked them for their keys and went into their homes and got all their beer they had. We brought it out and told them we were throwing it away. They knew what they were doing wasn't good and that they had been caught. So they weren't mad at us or anything. We were just making a point and committed them to change. To think about what they're doing before they do it.

Another cool thing that happened is we had zone conference. A member of the first quorum of the Seventy came and talked to us about asking questions and getting to the bottom of things and finding people's real concerns. They'll cover their real concerns with fake ones, but we have to really get to know them so that we can truly help them. It was realllly good. Then, 2 days later, we actually applied it. We had to. We have a man we're teaching, Arturo, who has a baptismal date. We got there to talk to him about it and he tells us that he feels it's not for him. We were like NOOOOO! WHAT?! So we started just asking him the baptismal questions. Turns out that he had a few concerns with them, one of which was a belief in Jesus Christ. He said that he only kind of believed in Him, but that he didn't understand the point. Woah. Big concern. That was something we had just assumed he knew. So now we know what we need to work on and how we can help him. It was exactly what we needed to do with him. Help him learn more of Christ.

And I also learned a lot about exactly how crucial Jesus Christ is in our lives. He is central. Because our Heavenly Father loves us so much, He made a way that we could have remission from our sins and bad things we do in this life. JESUS CHRIST! He figured it all out. Without that, we would all be lost after the first time we do the tiniest little sin. No one would be able to return to live with God. But He came up with a solution for that. How amazing! I love this gospel and know it's true!

I hope you have an amazing week and I love you all!

Hermana Shirley

My big bug photo. You can't tell, but it was like as long as my finger and really fat too.