Dearest Family and Friends,
The rain doesn´t appear to be leaving anytime soon and I´m starting to understand a little bit of what Sara must feel like in Washington. I´ve only seen the sun a handful of times this week. The only difference between us is that it´s hot and sticky here, so I don´t miss the sun much...at least not yet! My feet seem to be constantly wet, but I just count my blessings that the rain is here to bring down hotter temperatures. In the last week I´ve seen a big change as my first week in the area was rather hard. Following the example of my companion, I´ve begun to ask the Lord daily to help me see a miracle and have a mission experience. And I am here to say that the Lord truly does answer prayers! Not only were we able to see the baptism and confirmation of Jerhemi this week, but we´ve already put down another fecha with Yanci and had 7 investigators in church compared to our 2 from last week. We also had a really neat experience visiting an old contact we made. Almost 2 weeks ago while sitting on a park bench for a minute to rest and strategize, we contacted an man named Medina and invited him to church. He was very amiable, so we exchanged addresses and gave him a pamphlet of the restoration without thinking too much of it. But then Sunday when we had some unplanned extra time in the evening and two members leaving with us, we decided to drop by Medina´s house. After searching for almost 20 minutes and knocking on his door in the dark (because of course the light was out...like always), we were almost scared away by a gruff WHO´S THERE? from the other side of the door. However, when Medina opened and saw it was us, he quickly changed and told us that he had lots of questions and read the pamphlet and wanted to know more! It was a really neat experience, and helped me realize that you never really know what might come of a simple invitation. We also taught the first English class of Los Trinitarios, and were happy to see more than 20 people show up. Turns out English is a pretty popular interest! We hope to see some fruit come out of that service as well. Hermana Mejia and I are also earning reputations for ourself in the ward...me as the ¨peleona¨ and her as ¨la risita¨. We had an especially good laugh on Saturday during the baptism of Jerhemi as we attempted to sing a special musical number as the 4 ward missionaries. Unfortunately the elders had intercambios the last minute and poor Elder Newell just had to wing it when he showed up, which resulted in him accidentally singing in a wrong part, causing Hermana Mejia to laugh so hard she had to hide her face behind the hymnal and leave me singing alone for a moment. Oh well. Hopefully the Spirit was still there! Hope you all have a good week and to finish off here´s a great quote I read from the June Liahona this morning. ¨Just when all seems to be going right, challenges often come in multiple doses applied simultaneously. When those trials are not consequences of your disobedience, they are evidence that the Lord feels you are prepared to grow more....To get you from where you are to where He wants you to be requires a lot of stretching, and that generally entails discomfort and pain.¨ - Elder Richard G. Scott. So here´s to some stretching and discomfort!
Love,
Hermana Bradley