Tomorrow

This is Jeremiah's letter from last week. I was at Girls Camp all week and was unable to send it. Thanks for all your support and prayers for Elder Scanlan!

This week was pretty great and pretty hard. Just like practically every other week.

We started out desperately searching for new people to teach. We hadn't found hardly any new people in the last few weeks, so we were trying our best to see what we could do to find new people. We started out trying to really pray harder for it, in the first place. We took as a model Alma in Alma 31:

 34 O Lord, wilt thou grant unto us that we may havesuccess in bringing them again unto thee in Christ.

 35 Behold, O Lord, their souls are precious, and many of them are our brethren; therefore, give unto us, O Lord,power and wisdom that we may bring these, our brethren,again unto thee.

And we had some miracles! First of all, our primary president had "forwarded" a referral to us that she had received from somebody else - who, we weren't sure, but hey , it was a referral. After a few tries we managed to find them and teach them, and they turned out to be super receptive! We were ending the lesson when I suddenly remembered the circumstances and asked, "Hey, did you guys talk with a member of our church or something to have us come?" And they were like, "Well, there was this one lady talked about the missionaries, but I don't remember her name...she's from Chaltura, she sells honey..." And I knew INSTANTLY who it was. Laura Picuasi! She's this member I met who attends the branch I worked in while I was in Ibarra, and she was the same member who gave us the referral of the Pillajos, who we'd baptized in Ibarra! Wow! I was so happy. We need more members like that! I think Sister Picuasi's door-to-door honey business is really a scheme to share the Gospel sometimes. :)

Another fun experience we had: We were teaching some investigators and watching the 20 minute version of the Restoration movie...but it kept freezing up! I was kind of frustrated, and it decided to freeze up RIGHT before the first vision...so I said a prayer, but tried to be sincere, rather than just emitting an SOS like we sometimes do. I said, "If it's thy will, I know we can watch this movie." And it worked! I'm just glad it was the Lord's will and that he reminded me he can answer my prayers. :)

We also had...Pamela's baptism!! It went great. When she shared her feelings after the baptism she was very grateful, and we could feel the Spirit. I'm very grateful for the the chance to teach her. Now comes the potentially harder part...the retention! We've only won half the battle.

Apart from that, yesterday was pretty depressing, because apart from Pamela, who came for her confirmation, NOBODY came to church! I was really frustrated during a large part of the afternoon, and just really discouraged. Eventually I got over it, but it was pretty tough! Discouragement is tough! But here's something I love from Elder Holland's recent conference talk:

Only the adversary, the enemy of us all, would try toconvince us that the ideals [of the gospel] are depressing and unrealistic, that people don’t really improve, that no one really progresses. And why does Lucifer give that speech? Because he knows he can’t improve, he can’t progress, that worlds without end he will never have a bright tomorrow. He is a miserable man bound by eternal limitations, and he wants you to be miserable too. Well, don’t fall for that. With the gift of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the strength of heaven to help us, we can improve, and the great thing about the gospel is we get credit for trying, even if we don’t always succeed.

...If we give our heart to God, if welove the Lord Jesus Christ, if we do the best we can to live the gospel, then tomorrow—and every other day—is ultimately going to bemagnificent,...

I love that! I hope you can realize it, too. Love you all tons!

Baptism!!

I finally got to try "caldo de 31," a soup made from cow intestines. I'd heard horrible things about this, but it wasn't really that bad...of course it was a lot better after squeezing like half a lime into it...

We did service for the patriarch, who attends our ward.

We were just working a bit in his field. I think they're peas.