Seventy Weeks

Hello Everybody!

This has been a pretty easy-going week, nothing too out of the ordinary. 

One day I found a food menu/flyer on the sidewalk outside of our apartment that had pretty good prices so I brought it to the offices and it turned out that just that day we had to order food so we decided to try it out. We ordered a couple of milanesa sandwiches, and when they got here they turned out to be huge. We were more than happy and quite enjoyed them.

Another day, as we were leaving out of our apartment, I noticed something purple in the bush outside of the apartment. It turned out to be a little toy beetle placed just so. It put a big smile on my face, so I figured I´d share a couple of pictures of it.

Yesterday too then, we had lunch in the Fuerte Apache with a family that had some returned missionaries (Fuerte Apache being the most well known villa in all of the mission), and so I grabbed a couple pictures to share of that too.

As far as spiritual experiences go though, one of the coolest ones that I have had thus far in the mission has happened this week. It goes as thus:

About a month and a half ago, we contacted a few youth just hanging out right outside of a Kiosco (like a mini-mart type deal), and after coming back a couple of times we met somebody there that attended the Kiosco most days named Carolina. Over time we have gone teaching her and she has really enjoyed it - she has read pretty much every piece of material that we have given to her, marking it up and rereading it to better understand it, including multiple chapters in the Book of Mormon. She promised us that she would go to church one week but that Sunday she ended up having to go out of town. She was supposed to have the next off though, and so she was excited to go when her boss told her she had to work that day. She tried to ask him if she could have the morning off to at least go to church and he ended up firing her. Thus, for learning about the gospel and asking to go to church, she lost her job. When she told us we were dumbfounded and didn't know what to say. That was the first time that I had heard of that happening since I have been in the mission. Well, a few days later she was home alone and of her own she just picked up the Book of Mormon and started reading it from the beginning. She got about 14 pages in and stopped to ask a prayer to know if it was true. (That is what we invite people to do - ask people to pray to god to know from him if it is true, so that they can receive their own response from him instead of just having to trust our word on it. It's really awesome because he does answer, and people find a lot of faith in the response they receive). Anyhow, she prayed to know if the Book of Mormon is true, if what we taught her was true, if Christ's true church really had been restored to the earth after all the time that it had been lost following his death, and if it really was the path she needed to follow. She was expecting some kind of feeling to be able to get her answer (often a feeling of warmth or comfort is the way that you receive your answer), but she didn't really get anything. She then went to bed, perhaps a little disappointed, but she actually had a dream where she received an answer through someone talking to her and telling her that yes, it was true, and that it is where she needed to be. She is now super excited to learn more and really put forth her best effort to apply what she learns, and we have an appointment to teach her tomorrow at 5:00, right when we finish in the offices for the day, and I am super excited for it. 

The only catch of it all though, is that we are going to have to pass her on to the other office Elders because though she works in our area (and we always visited her in her work in downtime) she actually lives in their area and so they need to be the ones to teach her. Thus, the appointment tomorrow is with them as well so that she can get to know them too. It's kind of sad that we have to pass her on, but I am super excited for her and that she received her own response and am really excited to how she learns and grows.

Other than that though, there isn't all that much new for this week, and so I hope that you all have a good week!

Love,

Elder McCollum