There´s been a lot of like tornadoes and earthquakes here in the last few months, and it's funny cause some people act like the world is ending! Haha! This kinda stuff isn´t normal in Uruguay!
This week I had a ton of spiritual experiences, but it's hard to explain! I have just seen God work through me and through others to spread this Gospel! I have felt the Spirit more profoundly in parts of this week than I have the rest of my mission. And I keep thinking that to myself, so I hope the amount and the power of the Spirit I can feel, keeps growing in the next two years! It kinda makes me nervous to think about my mission as two years because I´m loving it, and I only have two years to just give everything I can to the Lord! After these two years, I´ll just be a normal guy again! Haha! But really it's super great to see the light in people´s eyes as they start to learn and accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ! It's indescribable the feelings I´ve had to see people change their lives for the better and find true joy! And it´s humbling to hear people, both members of the church and people who aren´t, pray to God with thanks for us, for the two 18 year old gringos who are sharing this incredible message!
Love y´all! Hope you enjoy the snow, I´m enjoying the sun! Haha! Feliz Navidad!
Love,
Elder Cole
Parts of the family Email:
Hey Ma! I´m doing real good. I really enjoy it here. My Spanish is still terrible but people can kinda understand me now. Haha!
This week was good! This Friday we had some really great experiences! We´ve been teaching a family and the dad hasn´t committed to baptism yet.... because we havn´t asked him. He is really skittish and we didn´t want to scare him away but we knew he was enjoying the gospel and he attends church almost every Sunday. But during our lesson he started to talk and he just opened up. He says that he wants to make the church a part of his life but he feels like because he isn´t a member, he is an outsider because he can´t participate in some things. He says it's like sitting at a table and everyone else can eat and enjoy, but he can´t, he can only watch. I was so excited when he said this because I could feel the Spirit so strongly telling me that now was the time to ask him to be baptized. And I did. And he said yes! Like most people here, he isn´t married so we have to deal with that first; but I´m just so glad he is on the path to baptism now! Its crazy, we have been too scared to invite him to be baptized, so he pretty much asked us! He told us that he wants to be a part of the church he just doesn´t know how! The Spirit was so strong! It was great!
Then we left and we were walking to our next appointment and we decided to stop and talk to a man in the street. It was good, but not any different that usual. But we thought we needed to give this man a Book of Mormon. The problem was we only have two Book of Mormons right now and both are super old and beat up. The whole mission is out of Book of Mormons. So we felt bad offering this one. Then just as we were thinking this, a guy that neither Elder Ward nor I have ever seen, walked up and gave a brand new Book of Mormon to our contact! And then he was gone! How in the world did some guy that we don´t know, just happened to be walking down the street with a Book of Mormon in his hand that he wanted to give away? It was crazy!
Then that night we got a call that a sister in our ward wanted a blessing. So we stopped by, and she hasn´t been sleeping real great because she was in the house of this religious man. Here there's a religion that they sacrifice things, like fruit or a chicken every once in a while.... but its a Brazilian religion and there´s rumors that they sacrifice bigger animals in Brazil. Anyways the sister was in the house of one of these priests and now she has nightmares every night about the house and she feels cursed. She is physically sick cause of it. So we decided to give her a blessing of comfort. And it was the most spiritually powerful blessing I have ever participated in! The feeling of the Spirit was just so strong, its hard to describe. This all happened in one day! It was a crazy experience because even for the minutes after, I just felt powerful, with the power of God!
I feel safe for the most part... we have to avoid certain areas when the sun goes down haha!
Hope ya´ll are alright! Love ya!Love,Elder Cole
Amazing!
ReplyDelete