Dearest Family, this week was the weirdest, wildest, and probably the hardest weeks of my entire mission. Ohhh man!! It was tough. :( Don't worry about me though. Challenges are good for ya. Rosa's husband is not being as good a person as he should be and is not really letting her participate in the church. We are not going to go over there for a couple weeks. We had reviewed the baptismal interview questions with Mariana and Ernesto and they passed them great but something happened in the interview for Mariana so she is pushed back a couple weeks. Ernesto has been getting a lot of work, which is good for him, but we haven't seen him for a week. Jehovah's witnesses are meeting with them too. We found out, luckily, that they aren't married! Who knew!?!? Ay caray after 40+ years of being together! We will do the wedding this sunday with Obispo Cid right after church haha. They will both get baptized though not even a problem. We are working hard and committing ourselves to really help them on the road to CONVERSION. Some red flags have gone up for them about what they "have read, have heard, or have been taught." We are going to focus on what they have felt, why they want to be baptized, why it is important, and what they are going to do after and stuff like that.
I still feel like I haven't even started on the week yet though! Elder Ramos and I had a key learning. I feel like a lot of missionaries at the end of their missions come to the realization that they wish they wouldn't wasted time with so many people. We have the tendency to get to attached to people that are so cool or that "were such a miracle to find!" We need to repent after having invited people to church for 4 straight weeks without coming. BYE BYE! It is time to build faith that there are prepared people out there! That is what I feel like we are doing. helping the prepared to become converted. We don't need to push unprepared people along the road to conversion. The church demands A LOT--or rather---the Lord expects us to consecrate everything, and if people aren't up for it we need to move on. To make a long story longer, we are moving on away from a large group of people. This week we were pretty hard-core on less-actives. #hardcoreinourownminds. we marked off like 5 or 6 houses of them and several investigators that we just aren't going to visit anymore. We feel that is the best decision and that we have done everything we can up to this point. I would say that it isn't easy for anyone to have a visit with someone then decide on the way out that it would be the last time for a while. Time to build our faith that The Lord has others in the area prepared. Elder Ramos and I are really working or tails off and doing our very best to stay away from knocking doors. It will be a lucha to stay away from doing it we will see how it goes haha.
It has been kind of hard with our Bishop this week. Sometimes I feel like I am too naive and ignorant. I just realized this week that people are kind of afraid of him and that he thinks he is the boss of the missionaries haha. It is true in some aspects, but no to the point of telling us to stay at ward parties so we can help when we have visits to make. Stuff like that. I talked with President RST for like 15 minutes on friday morning and all the sister missionaries after. They are such great sisters. But we all need to work through some stuff. There was a huge problem this week and last with Jaime (I talked about him three weeks ago--the one we gave a blessing to that has some issues.) He has been causing a lot of rumors to be spread because of the hermanas teaching him and weird things happening. He got embarrassed and wont come to church anymore and now we are doing with it all. The Berrellezas (remember, one of my favorite families that joined the church last year) are really struggling. He just got called as Elders Quorum second counselor and they are getting ready to go through the Temple. SATAN EXISTS. That I testify of because he is attacking them at a very crucial time. They know what is most important but they are losing sight of it at the wrong time. Elder Ramos has not been more sick than this week in his whole mission. He is trying SOOOO hard. I am trying sooooo hard too. Last night I felt like cryi----Side Note!!! So I feel like I have gotten "hard" on the mission. Haha. I felt like I cried a lot before and actually a few times with Elders Cardoso and Pollmeier because I was a head-case with them, but since--not once. Emotionally caught up by the Spirit, but not crying or shedding tears at all. I feel like my sensitive side is dulling a little. I still feel love for people, of course, and I care about them, but I am getting harder haha. So yeah, I felt like crying as I laid there in bed. I decided; I am just investing too much into it! If I didn't care about people I am working on loving (some very easy to love, some not) then it wouldn't be hard!But it is, it is so hard! If I weren't who I am I could just lock myself in our Corolla or crawl under a rock and not care about anything. It would be so easy! The reason why this week was hard is because we are putting ourselves out there so much. Without getting too corny I guess that is why they say that loving others can be hard because you get your heart broken by them or something. Left me thinking of the Savior a lot. When we pray for love for people and really work for it then The Lord sends us trials, both related and unrelated to these people, so we can best learn how to help them, serve them, and be an instrument in the Lord's hands so he can succor them. I guess that is exactly what the Atonement is. Because Christ and our Heavenly Father love us, they went through that to be able to help us. Man, it exhausts me Spiritually. I will never be able to understand the Spiritual pain He went through, but I think it is appropriate for Christ's servants (ANY of us that CHOSE to be out on the Lord's errand) to be "types" of Christ and feel that pain, that love for others. For most of these people, I didn't really feel love for them until the "end." You don't really know you love them, nor how much you really want to help them until you hit a roadblock. We hit A LOT of roadblocks this week. Sounds selfish, but if we hadn't, I probably wouldn't have learned all this. Haha. We are the sum of the trials we have been through and conquered!
Some good to the week!!
We had zone conferences in Surprise last week. Other than my mouth tasting like blood after translating for 3 hours for a new missionary that is learning English, it was excellent. President and Sister TAylor really know how to invite the Spirit. More importantly, they know how to help us invite it for ourselves so we have our own experiences and "Spiritual Awakenings." They helped us to "jump out of the boat" by sharing our spiritual experiences with each other as Peter did. I am going to miss them a lot. A day later I went back to Surprise for a baptismal interview and HErmana Jenkins and some other members were at church. That was pretty cool. We visited Jessica Patino last night! We hadn't been for three weeks because she has been busy with school. That kind of stunk because we don't want her to get baptized and then just not have us go over. We talked about the temple with the whole family and LEO! the parents should be going through soon and hopefully we go to do baptisms with Jessica before transfers :D Leo said he believed it is all true and that he had prayed about the Book of Mormon and feels it is true. If his family would not be so hard on him, he would be good to go.
I am doing fine. Not too stressed. I am having fun. Extremely tired, but it is fun. Us 4 in the apartment are going to Culver's to get some ice cream and talk for an hour of non-missionary things! It will be nice. I have also been reading the Family history stuff from dad. I actually read it all and i LOVE IT. SEND MORE. If you can find some. I really do love it it is faith-building. You are all doing great, don't worry about my approval stamp, thanks for sharing about what is going on :D Love you.
Elder Parry
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