This week has been quite interesting for me, as I had the experience to be in a trio for about half of the week, let me explain. This week in the mission, all of the leaders that are located in the city had a meeting from Tuesday-Friday 8am-4pm for leadership training and all that. My district leader Elder Ramirez had to go, so that left me with his companion Elder Menendez, a brand new missionary from El Salvador. Every morning we met in the chapel at 6:20 to meet up and send off the leader missionaries, and headed back to the area in a threesome. I had the wonderful opportunity to be with 2 newer missionaries this week and learn a lot from each of their great testimonies. Every morning for companionship study I took advantage of the extra missionary and used the time to help them out. We did role play examples where I would be the investigator, and I tried to help them learn all of the things that I wished I knew when I was a greenie missionary. We had a good time together and it was a great experience. We spent 2 of these days working in the area of Elder Menendez, which is called Zorzales. It is the smallest area in the mission (about the size of Hearthstone {Tyler's neighborhood in South Jordan}, just that it has WAY more houses packed together), and sometimes very difficult to find new people to teach since everyone in the neighborhood already knows what our deal is. We were able to find 1 new investigator named Juan, and it was really weird teaching with 2 companions instead of 1, but we got used to it and enjoyed the learning opportunity.
After the couple of days we had working in Zorzales and making our way to the chapel and back 2 times a day, we didn't have a lot of time to find a bunch of new investigators, so we decided to really focus hard on the investigators that we have so that they can progress. One of the part-member couples that we are teaching have made a lot of progress. Their names are Mayra and Cristian. Mayra is a less active member, who went through a wicked separation with her first husband, and since the occurrence hasn't returned to church, and Cristian who is not a member, is her new husband who isn't a member. We are working hard with them so that they can come to church, divorce from the first husband, and get married so that Hno. Cristian can be baptized. It's going to be a big challenge for us, since we have a lot of "paperwork" to do, but we're up to the challenge. If I could do it with the "unbaptizable" Hno. Franklin in Ciudad España, why can't the Lord help me to accomplish another? We scheduled an interview with the bishop for the 2 of them, so that the bishop could instruct them about the importance of marriage and keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Hna. Mayra is a little bit embarrassed to come back to church, since the brother of her ex-husband are members of the church and she thinks that they're going to say something to her. But, with the help of the bishop, he was able to convince her. But, what happened with the Hno. Cristian is what really shocked me.
The next day when we went to visit, we asked them how it went. Cristian told us that he had a really great experience, and that something happened that he couldn't explain. He told me that when they were saying the opening prayer, he felt something really strong, burning type feeling in his heart and he felt like he was going to cry. We took advantage of the moment and were able to explain to him that what he felt was the Holy Spirit testifying to his heart that what he was doing was right. He felt that what we were telling him was true, and told us that he has an extreme desire to come to church. Sadly, his work called him at the last second and told him he had to come in on Sunday so he couldn't be there, but he told us sorry like a million times and that he will be there next week. What a champ!
The other investigator that has begun to progress is Seydy, a seventeen year old girl that the missionaries found contacting a couple of days before I got there. She had troubles reading the Book of Mormon, and at first it really didn't seem like she had the desire to know if these things were true, but we had a powerful lesson about studying the scriptures and how it can bless her life. Afterwards, she committed to read, and what would you know, she did it! And not only that, but she also came to church with us yesterday! We are happy to see that the progress is coming slowly but surely here in Pedregal, and I hope that we can continue helping the people here find the true gospel of Christ.
To answer the questions of you mom, with respect to the laundry, I'm back to washing all of my clothes by hand...ugh, haha. And the food, we pay one of the sisters to make us lunch every day, and for dinner we just go around asking members if they will give us free food, and if there aren't any takers, we go back to the house and eat a Cup o Noodles Instant soup or Grilled Cheese Sandwich. :)
Vaya Pues,
Elder Tinkham
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