Hello out there once again to all of my family and friends! Hope that everything has been going well with you guys! I’ve been pretty darn busy with a ton of work as usual, but what else do you expect right? Nobody said the work of the Lord was going to be easy! This week we had a couple of cool experiences that I’d like to tell you about.
To give you a small update on the families of the late night contacts we made, we have been able to teach one of these families, and it was a pretty great lesson! They have a giant house and a lot of crazy stuff in it. Turns out that they just barely moved in to the neighborhood about 2 weeks ago and are just getting settled in. We invited them to get baptized and everything, and they said that they would progress toward that while they studied with us if they felt it was right. We have been trying to come back and visit, and we have even brought a ton of members with us to visit as well, but every time we have gone back they weren’t there! We still have hope for them, and we’re going to go back today.
We also received a reference from the stake president this week. Her name is Dorian, a 24 year old African American girl who at one point in time was dating a member of the church. She also attended a few times the institute class that the stake president taught on Presidents of the church, so we were a little bit excited to go! He went with us to her house, and we had a Great lesson! She would have come to church with us yesterday, but she had like 4 teeth pulled on Saturday and stayed in bed all day Sunday. But we are going to go back on Tuesday, and we hope that everything goes great! She is looking like our next baptism in the area.
With respect to the rest of the investigators, right now most of them are so-so. Michael ended up being a great baptism, and he is a definite honor of the Aaronic Priesthood that he just received. He has his white shirt and tie and everything, and is getting ready to be ordained a teacher next week for his birthday! We also had a cool experience at church as well.... we have been teaching a man named Adolfo for a little while now, but it has been a little bit frustrating. He is a professed Calvinist (really rare here) and has his own crazy beliefs on religion. When my companion and I where on interchanges this week, they went over there, and in the middle of a frustrating lesson they just decided to invite him to come to church, and he said yes! He drove us to church in his car haha! We’re still not sure if he really liked it or anything like that, but we did the best that we possibly could to make it a spiritual experience for him.
Elder Sinclair and I had an idea this week on a new way to find new investigators. We have decided to have an institute class for the public. It’s called Jesus Class. We made a ton of flyers, and have started to pass them out to everyone and inviting them to our class to learn about Christ in the New Testament. We’re going to start the classes probably at the end of this week or the next, but we hope it works! We spent a long time on the invitations, and we’ll see how many people end up showing up right?
I think I’m finally starting to figure out how to be a leader around here. Before, I definitely felt very incompetent to direct a group of missionaries, and often times I found myself cranking my mind trying to figure out how to resolve the problems of the rest of the missionaries but didn’t find answers. I thought, how can I help them out if I struggle to help myself out? But I now have a testimony that the Lord prepares his servants to do what He needs them to do. I am finding it easier for me to help the rest of the missionaries when we go on interchanges. I am more apt to give advice and things like that, something that I could never do before. On Saturday, while my companion was doing a couple of baptismal interviews, I went out with one of our district leaders to a very special appointment. We visited the wife of a recent convert. She had just visited the church for the first time the Sunday before, and turns out she loved it. We taught an incredibly spiritual lesson, testified of the book of Mormon, and invited her to be baptized the next Saturday (in 5 days!) She accepted with a smile, and I was amazed. It’s incredible the things that the Spirit can do when one prepares.
I have also been working a lot on opening my mouth to everyone. I am running out of months left in the mission, and as more and more time runs down, the more worried you get about becoming the missionary you need to be. I’m trying not to waste a single moment anymore, that way I will be obeying with what the Lord has said to us in Matthew 10: “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven, But, whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.”
I love you all!
Vaya Pues!
Elder Tinkham
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