Last week I wrote that JC got in yet another accident (and none of the three were his fault). He is still waiting to see if he will be fired from his job right now, but he told us the other day that he already has another job in sight. "L (his wife) has a friend whose husband is a recruiter for work in the mines. So, if she tells him to let someone in, he usually does so and they get a job."
"And what would you be working in in the mines?" We asked.
"They asked me if I know how to drive."
We laughed a good five minutes for that one as we imagined JC´s fourth accident, with one of the gigantic, larger-than-life dump trucks used in the Chilean mines.
We taught M and her granddaughter again this week (a few weeks had gone by since we had seen them, M has been going to church in another city with her sister since January). We watched the 20-minute movie of the Restoration, and then talked about the Book of Mormon and how to pray and receive and answer by the Holy Ghost that it is true. F, M´s granddaughter, seemed really eager to pray and ask--I am excited to see how she and her grandma receive an answer.
We also taught a fantastic lesson about the Restoration with E, an elderly lady that we got to know by way of her sister, who is a member of the church. After Elder J told the story of the first vision, how Joseph Smith prayed to know which church is true and was visited by God and Jesus Christ, she started crying and said, "That is so incredible! I´m so glad to know that there is a true church here on the earth!" I think that is how everybody in the world should react to this message... due to her age she has difficultly walking and didn´t make it to church this week, but I´m sure she will in the coming weeks.
After one lesson this week, P and D took a few minutes to express to us just how committed and happy they are to change their lives and follow Jesus Christ. They compared the joy and light that they are feeling/learning now with the darkness and sadness that they have recently had to pass through, and bore their testimonies of God´s reality and love for us. When we finished our lesson with a prayer, D said, "I always wish that we could keep on talking about God, I feel so good when you are here teaching us!"
One really beautiful experience that we have had in these last few weeks has to do with Hermana L, who has been less-active for about 10 years (she and her ex husband live apart, he and their two older sons are active whereas she and the two younger daughters were not). I heard about this sister in my first week here, from a neighbor who is also a member of the church. I never really thought much of it, until finally, about a month ago, I started feeling like we should go by and visit her. So we went, got to know the half of the family we didn´t know, and set up a visit. Two weeks passed by, we kept visiting and teaching them, without really knowing if we would end up seeing any change because of our visits. To be honest, I felt rather lost during some of the lessons, confident that the spirit knew what it was doing and why we were teaching what we were talking about, but unable to see the bigger picture myself. Finally, this last week, we taught a great lesson about how important it is to learn about God, and we finished off inviting them to attend an activity we had planned for that weekend, and to attend church the next day. Hermana L started out saying that she had been inactive for 10 years, that she had met many missionaries and that none of them had convinced her to return to the church. Then she paused and said, "but maybe the time has come to come back to church." She said that she felt the spirit during our visits, and that she had been especially touched because we had done kneeling prayers with the family. The entire family, mom, dad, and all four kids, went to church yesterday. (they took up almost as much space as our family does!)
Viviendo el sueño,
Elder Jason Ray
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