It was great to see you all yesterday. I really enjoyed the skype call, and am amazed at how much the kids have grown!
We had an interesting week, with a couple setbacks and a couple big advances, too. The first big setback--Ir, who has gone to church the last few weeks and was preparing herself to be baptized with her daughter Ch, had a boyfriend a few years ago. Well, he moved back in, and Ir hasn´t received us back in her house since he got there. We are hoping things change, or that we can help her feel once again what she had been feeling in the past few weeks.
Second setback--JC and LE are getting married this next weekend. JC should be almost ready to be baptized, but it has now been two months since he has gone to church, and a months since LE went. They still haven´t quite recognized that it´s not ok to stay at home, to say it like that, and I would ask for all of your prayers that they can get over this slump and get completely active in the church (and that JC can get baptized).
The first big advance was with C. She hadn´t gone to church in two months, but this last week we had a really powerful lesson. She realized the dangerous position she was in, that she had started drifting away from God by accident, and that she needed to act fast to correct her course and not end up really, really bad in a few weeks more. We were able to give her a blessing of counsel and comfort, I think that helped a lot, and the ward member who baptized her accompanied us in a visit to talk to her and help her wake up her testimony. She Made it to church yesterday! She didn´t stay all 3 hours, but she was there, and that was a big deal.
The other big advance was with S, a friend of C that we met in her house. For the first time ever, we went by to see S in her own house, and she told us a little bit about her life. She said that she doesn´t want to keep going in the same direction her life is going in right now, that she wants to change, give up smoking and drinking and come unto Christ. She came to church, too--which was a big help to C to come--and is already reading anxiously to find out if our message is really true. I was quite surprised and delighted to find out all of this about S, I had never really looked at her as someone who would want to change their life and come to God. I guess that should be a lesson for me.
Several weeks ago we met a blind man named W who we taught for about a week before we realized that he didn´t want to continue. This last week, we ran into his daughter, M, and her boyfriend L. They felt bad because we hadn´t stopped by to visit them, and asked us to keep sharing with them, even though W didn´t want to listen to us. So, we had a really fun visit with L (16) and M (14), neither of their parents want anything to do with God but they are trying to find Him.
Yesterday we were trying to watch the short video about the Restoration with E and M, a less active member and her non-member husband. The video player started acting up and freezing right in the moment when Joseph Smith went to the grove to pray and ask God which church was true. I found it very fitting that, just as Satan tried to keep Joseph Smith from having his sacred vision, he wanted to keep E and M from knowing about it. Luckily it didn´t work, we got to see the video anyway and they felt the spirit and are starting to realize that it is true.
Viviendo el sueño,
Elder Jason Ray
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