19 March, 2012

Cleaning inspections

Well, this week has been good. We have been working super hard. I didn't really think that there was anything more I could do to work harder, but I really learned this week that there is always more effort that we can give on our part, so that the lord can bless us more on his part.
 
This week we found a total of 29 new investigators, and had 32 baptismal invitations. We also were able to get 42 lessons in the week(the past couple weeks we have been getting 10 news, 10 invitations, and 28 lessons or so). We really saw a lot of miracles in the week, as well as our fair share of trials and hardships.

To start the week off, I got a call from President Callan on Monday, he just let me know that the cleaning inspections in our district were going to be on Tuesday, and that my companion and I were going to go with them to check all the apartments. We only had two hours left on p-day, so we just did all the cleaning that we could manage, before going out to work. Then the rest of Monday we had a pretty good day.
 
On Tuesday, we had the cleaning inspections with President and Hermana Callan, and we drove around with them to inspect the other apartments of the other elders in my district. After that we got home, ate lunch, and went out to work. We just had an explosion of a day on Tuesday. We found ten new investigators during the day, all of which were good new investigators. We also taught quite a bit of lessons along with that.

On Wednesday, we had our district meeting and we did divisions after with another companionship. Elder Brown (came with me) went to my area with my companion, and I went with Elder Ayola (1 change more than me.) President basically put them together because they are both disobedient, and don't really do what they should be doing. I did divisions with Elder Ayola, and I talked to him a lot about the mission, and the importance of being obedient, and finishing his mission strong. Then the next morning, we sat down to do the evaluation. Right then President Callan called their phone. I answered, and he told me that Elder Ayola's companion told president that he is watching movies on the dvd player. He told me that I needed to take it away, and also ask him to give me the dvd's. I just kept going with the evaluation after, and talked to him about the importance of obedience. I shared a scripture in D&C 88 that says if we can't obey a celestial law, we can't support a celestial glory. I explained that in the mission we have a celestial law, and we have to learn how to obey with exactness to progress toward a celestial glory. Then I shared Alma 34:34 and told him the same spirit with which he wants to obey in the mission, is the same spirit that will possess him after the mission. Then at the end I had to tell him what president said, so I took the DVD's that he had, and the DVD player from their pension.
 
On Thursday, after all of that, we had a good day. We were able to find some good new investigators again, and put baptismal dates with a bunch of people. On Friday, we had another really good day, we found another 6 new investigators, and really saw some miracles during the day. We found these two guys that we taught. They are David (20) and Oscar(22). Oscar was telling us a story about how he didn't understand why God created the earth in 6 days, and then had to rest. He said he prayed about it, and that he heard a voice in his head. He said it told him: "My time is not like the time of man, to me one day is like 1000 years, to put it in a way that you can understand." There was a little more to the story, but we were pretty surprised when he said that about 100 years being like a day to man, seeing as it says that in the scriptures, and he said that he doesn't really read the scriptures. We taught them all of the Restoration, and left them with a Book Of Mormon.
 
Speaking of Books of Mormon. When I got to this area, we had 4 boxes of them. Then when Elder Richards came he brought another. We have been giving them out a lot, and right now we actually are about to run out. We had over 120, and now we have about 5 left. Well, I think we are doing good with flooding the world (or at least Hernandarias 2) with Books of Mormon.

There is a new doctrine that apparently the Catholic church just started. They say that Everybody is a church, and that the families are a church. Every single catholic brings that up now when we start talking about the true church. They always say, well I don't think there is a true church, the church is every one of us. What we do and say is the church. I was really thinking about the doctrine of that, which is completely false. It really is clear that it is from Satan, because now he wants people to think that they are all churches, and that there is no need for the true church. We just have to have faith in Jesus, and that is the church inside of everyone of us. It's been really frustrating trying to have to explain to them, that they are not in fact a church, seeing as the definition of church is an organization of people. The devil and his tactics are pushing hard..... We got to the point at the end of this week where a guy told us that he was a church, and I was so sick of hearing it, that I just asked him, Hermano, do you really believe that you are a church? He thought about it for a second, and then said.... No. They just believe anything the pope says, even when they themselves don't really believe it.....

On Saturday, we had a good trial. We had an influx of new investigators and had way too many to be able to visit all of them to commit them to go to church. We talked to two members, and set up to do divisions with them, to be able to cover all of our appointments. We had a good 20 or thirty appointments for the last couple hours of the day. A little bit before we were going to do the divisions, everything was falling through, and so we started using a couple of our extra appointments to use time. They also fell through. We then called off the divisions, seeing as we no longer needed to cover so many, but we still had a lot of appointments left. In less than and hour, we had about 10 more appointments fall through. It was really strange, because it was Saturday, and everybody else was home, but the only houses that looked empty, were those of our investigators. At near the end of the day, we went and did a contact of a family that was sitting outside(seeing as they were the only people we could find that weren't drinking) I started contacting them, and they were coming up with all sorts of excuses to not share with us. Finally I convinced them to just listen for a couple minutes, and we sat down on the step (they didn't have chairs) and taught them. It turned out to be a really good spiritual lesson, even though there was a church in front that was playing a guitar and singing, and people that were coming to their house to buy stuff (they have a little in-home store.) Anyway, they accepted a BOM and the invitation to read and pray. They were really excited to do so.

On Sunday, we only had one investigator show up, due to the fact that we couldn't visit any of them the day before. We had a couple of good lessons during the day as well, and ended the week off well. We have 13 people with baptismal dates right now, 12 of the which are for the 7th of April. My companion and I are both hoping that we can stay together another change to actually be able to see the baptisms together. The change is on the 4th of April, so we'll see what happens. We have a lot of potential right now in our area, and we are seeing lots of miracles. Things are changing a lot in the area, now we just need to start seeing the baptisms.

I love you guys tons, and hope all is well with you. How was the marriage? I didn't hear anything from you guys..... I suppose maybe you had daylight savings time? Well, anyway, hope to hear how the marriage went next week... Love ya,

Elder Ryan Griffin

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