We had a few small miracles this week. Well any time someone invites us in on a door knock is a miracle and that happened a few times this week but we had some slightly larger ones. More on those later.
Elder Guerrero is being transferred out. My training is near over. Our district is a little different. As time progresses, I'm realizing that more and more. We see our whole district almost every day, if not everyday. We had zone P-day Monday and everyone does stuff all together and our Spanish district kind self-segregates. I guess that's a symptom of a few things, part of that being we are the only Spanish elders in the state. Also everyone stays for about a year in this area, typically 5-8 months on each side of the highway, so we all really get to know each other.
Wednesday was interesting. We kind of offended a ward member. We had just had district lunch after district meeting and we were all in a slight food coma after eating at this really good taco place and this lady calls us and says the food is getting cold and asked where we were. She didn't sign up on the food sheet so we had no idea what she was talking about. Sadly we went over and ate a little bit anyway. The problem was that we didn't eat a normal quantity because we were all already full. She said a few things. We shared a really nice spiritual message that turned into spiritually filled testimony meeting so we left on mostly good terms. People are just too sensitive sometimes.
Later that day I believe we had a lesson with German. During our last lesson with him he talked about giving up cigarettes and how he always feels guilty and down after he smokes them. We gave him a Priesthood blessing and he committed to not smoke again. Our next lesson with him he said he was walking to the store and was checking out and out of habit asked for a pack and an audible voice told him not to, he realized what he was doing and put them back. That was one of the miracles. German is awesome and fun to teach. His lessons really just show me the power of the scriptures. If would just all learn to "feast on the words of Christ" (2nephi 32:3) we would learn and grow so much more and so much more easily.
A few of the people we are working with are not doing as well as they used to be. One lady we teach really struggles to retain what we tell her. The weird thing is we will teach her, ask a lot of questions to see what she thinks and comprehends but the next visit it's like she doesn't remember. The Spanish barrier is real. We've been thinking pretty hard about what we can do to help her and praying but we haven't quite figured it out...yet. One of the problems is she has way too many distractions, kids won't sit still, people are always leaving, and she bought baby ducks that free range in her house....which is fun.
The Agelar family (Natividad's family) is doing well. We showed them the restoration video as part of our lesson and the Rosales family was with us. We just talked about the video and receiving answers to prayers and their doubts. It was a really good lesson and the Rosales's shared their testimonies. They want to get baptized, they are sincere, they love church, and the members love them, it's working out pretty well for them. In our lesson with them it came out that a member had invited them to dinner, one invited them to a baptism for one of the youth today, and another member invited them to family home evening.
The last miracle happened yesterday, but started two days ago. We pass off a lot of referrals because we cover a lot larger area than the English elders, so we teach a lesson and pass them along to the elders that cover that area. Two nights ago we found someone and called the elders for that area and they gave us two referrals from their area that same night. In our morning planning session, we didn't plan on visiting them that day. There where a few reasons for this, the first being that one didn't have a name, second that both didn't have phone numbers, and lastly, referrals that we get from other elders are typically people who don't speak English but have positive reactions when they try to say Jesucristo. We felt like we could/should visit them. The alternative would have been knock high street. Well, turns out there was a shoot out/ murder on the corner of High and Granville at the time we would have been there. So that's fun. I knew our area was kind of rough, but I didn't think it was broad day light murder rough. Spanish people are far nicer than any other group of people though, so we will be fine.
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