30 May 2016 - Things are looking up

Dear Friends and Family,

Things are looking up.

This week, unlike last week, we had people in church. Two people that had never come before. Sometimes missionary work is frustrating because you have leave a lot of the work that you did in weeks past behind to be able to focus on new people that have a higher chance of progressing, but it's worth it in the end.

So, lets start off with the worldly stuff: Monterrey lost the championship this week. Remember when Tigres won the championship a few months ago? Ha!

Anyway, on to the cool and important stuff. First the vaguely creepy part:

Occasionally, as a missionary, your day just flat doesn't go the way you want it to go. On days like this, it not unusual for a missionary to want to simply go and get something to eat and get to the house at 9. That was the case this Friday. BUT, it is also common that on occasions like this, that the spirit constrains you to not get discouraged and keep working till the end of the night. That was also the case this Friday.

We had one of the young men accompany us for several hours on Friday, but we were not able to get a single lesson out of it. All of our appointments fell and all of the contacts we did were lame. We were going to simply give up when the young man left at 830, BUT something told me that something good would happen if we kept at it. So, I grabbed an English Book of Mormon to give to an English speaking investigator and we went on our way to his house to drop it off. On the way there, a fellow that I had already met last month beckoned us over to his patio. Everything seemed kind of strange in the orange glow of the street light above, and the power was out throughout the entire street because of wind the day before, but we went over.

The kid turned out to be the husband of a young woman that I had bought tostadas from before. As we talked to them, we discovered that the young man was very confused about the concept of God while the girl had been raised by christian family members. Now here comes the strange and creepy bit: Here in Mexico, the cartels have promulgated a catholic knockoff cult dealing with a particular idolatrous image, la santa muerte. It's basically lady death or the grim reaper. The young man was brought up in the belief in this particular heathen saint and felt that it was coming to control him. Long story short, we taught him about the nature of God and the Devil and offered to get rid of his image of the SM. We made an appointment for the next day (which went surprisingly well) and on our way home we smashed the figure on the street and tossed it in a nearby trash.

It was wild.

Also, we discovered a neighborhood here called The Island which consists of a single dirt road with tiny side roads coming off of it. The road is separated from  everything else by an overgrown ditch that one must cross be means of a concrete bridge. Hence the name The Island. We found a few excellent new investigators there. It was an interesting day.

Se que el Señor nos guia en este obra. Se que si escuchamos los susurros del Espiritu Santo, vamos a ser bendecidos. Se que Cristo vive y dirige este Iglesia.