Ipiales - Week Six

Well, on Monday I almost didn't have p-day because we had to go to Pasto for interviews.....I came out of the interviews pretty excited because President had told me some things that really motivated me, when I said that I felt bad because our area was pretty bad and that I was training, he said he knew that the area was bad, that's why he put me there, and that he knew that I could make it better, and some other things, but we got back to Ipiales and we started going to work. We started visiting a ton of members and organizing family home evenings with their neighbors, we starting talking to a bunch of people in the street, and in the week we were able to complete our goal of 10 new investigators!

On Thursday we did divisions. I went with Elder Rivas, who's pretty new and for the first time has a disobedient companion and was starting to let his companion convince him to do some things, so I had to TRAIN him in these divisions that we did together. We went to that alcoholics foundation with a member who used to have a drinking problem before he was baptized, and he ended up sharing his testimony about the Word of Wisdom and how much the church has helped him. A few of the members started tearing up. I think a member's testimony ALWAYS makes a huge difference in the lessons. 

We also taught the mom of this 18 year old girl (who got baptized by herself like 4 years ago and has attended the church ever since!) and the mom was a little confused about why her daughter would spend so much money just to go to Ecuador (Guayaquil) just to go to a temple, so we explained a little bit about family history and baptisms for the dead, and then she got really mad because her daughter had asked for information about her grandmother, who, according to her, was a really bad person, and how she didn't want her daughter to do anything for that woman...but we explained a little bit more about the spirit world, and told her that as human beings we all make mistakes, in this case, her grandma was really bad to her, but how up there in the spirit world, she probably feels really bad about the damage she caused, and that this baptism would help her grandma to repent and help her as a person to grow closer to her family. She ended up crying during the closing prayer, but wasn't able to go to church on Sunday, we'.re not sure why.

We were also working with a less active, Brandon, who's 18 and was filling out his papers to go on a mission, but then his grandparents died and now he has a drinking problem. We pretty much told him "do you think your grandparents are proud of you, watching you drink every day from the heavens?" It was pretty direct, but he ended up going to church on Sunday, also we got him to commit to do the temple work for his grandparents (which includes being worthy to go to the temple) But he ran out of church crying during the last hymn, because there was a little testimony meeting of the people who went to the temple and the last testimony was about a girl who had done temple work for her grandpa. I think he felt really bad, and not worthy to be in church, so he literally RAN from the chapel

I would like to know how things keep going in Ipiales, but I got transferred because the Zone leader hated everybody and was finishing the mission, so he invented a bunch of stuff about all of the missionaries in the zone, and almost everyone had transfers, except my son, and all of the leaders were lowered, (ALL of the district leaders, and the other zone leader) some of them junior companion of new missionaries, and now I'm in Popayan (AGAIN) with another disobedient missionary (AGAIN), but I wrote a letter to president, and asked for an interview to be able to explain what REALLY happened (with evidence), so I think in a few weeks I'll be district leader again. Just a normal day in the Mision Colombia Cali 😒

It was paint, and foam. but mostly paint. 

Love you!