Elder West's Favorite Scripture

And now, my son, I have told you this that ye may learn wisdom, that ye may learn of me that there is no other way or means whereby man can be saved, only in and through Christ. Behold, he is the life and the light of the world. Behold, he is the work of truth and righteousness (Alma 38:9)

Monday, September 12, 2011

"Protected" 9-12-2011

Hola Guys!

hahaha, we are teaching a guy who speaks english and he said that to us one time. Spanglish is sooooo funnn, I think Kristen understands. I have been with a spanish speaking companion for the past 8 months, and I think that I am forgetting how to speak and write in enlgish a little bit. I cannot believe that chelsea got married that is nuts. Thats also really cool that Grant gets home this week, the thought of coming home makes me both really excited and really sad at the same time.

This week was really cool, we found 3 new investigadors this week and we challenged 3 families to be bapitized and they accepted! None of them agreed on a specific time or day but they basically said that they all want to get baptized they just want to wait more time. ME and my companion can baptize all of them. During the start of my mission I had a ton of baptism but I probably baptized alot of people who didnt have testimonies, and now that I think about it I could have done alot better on that. I personally will not baptize anyone unless they meet with the requirements that Doctrine and Covenants 20:37 says. For a while I was more excited about getting baptisms, baptisms, baptisms, and I wasnt exactly thinking about the needs of my investigadors and helping the gain strong testimonies. One of the challenges that the church has is retaining converts (keeping them active) after baptisms. It involves a ton of work like working with the members to establish friendships, helping them go to the temple, and etc....In this area we have baptized alot of really good converts and for this reason we have almost 100% retention of our converts. retention is just as important as baptism. I think that this is the lesson I have learned in the past few months. My goal is still to baptize every living soul in this area, but we need to have a much larger eternal perspective that is bigger than the baptismal font.

On sunday, all of the guatemalans voted for a new president, and this was part of the problem why alot of our investigadors didnt come to church this week. last week we had 10 people come to church, and yesterday we had only 4. But these 4 people are going to get baptized for sure. We are planning to baptize Amanda gomez this saturday if she can get married with her husband before than! we found her like 4 months ago and she is one of the most spiritual prepared investigaodrs I have ever seen. WE baptized her children in July.

Me and my companion had a close call experience with the spirit yesterday as well. At about 5 oclock me and my companion were going to go pick up a member to come with us to an appointment, when we entered into his street we noticed a trail of blood on the ground and me and my companio stopped and we noticed a drunk with and injured arm walking in our direction, so we decided to take the long route and avoid this potentially messy situation. We entered into the same street on the opposite end and walked toward the members house. We saw the drunk man and he was a few house down the road. Me and my companion suddenly felt this urgent feeling to get inside of the house of this member, we knocked on the door and got in as fast as we could. about 3 minutes later we hear 3 gun shots. That drunk guy was killed two house down from where we were. Me and my companion were kind of freaked out and we decided to wait a while before we left the house. I dont know what would have happened if we had stayed outside and I dont want to know. I am so glad that we had the spirit with us, and I know that god has protecting us. i feel safe in this area, because I know that If I am obedient God will protect us, and I am obedient so there is no problem. I just thought that I would share that experience with you guys because its a testiment of the power of the gift of the holy ghost that we have.

anyways I have to go, I love you guys and I am doing fantastic, and ELder Pineda and I are going going to baptize this week! and tommorow I will try and send a package out to you guys.

Love

Elder West


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