...After a trial of your faith

Dear All,

I feel like I say this every week, but what a week. In the zone conference we had a few weeks ago, they asked us to start writing an attribute of Christ to work on every day. This week I was trying to work on Faith. And for that, I think everything happened this week. It was a like I was living Ether 12:6 "You recieve no witness until after the trial of your faith." My faith was tried like never before this week. It was the first time since I've been here that I have genuinely not enjoyed. It started off on Monday night, with a bunch of people telling us that it was going to be cold this week, but you guys know me, I'm like psh cold what's that. And Elder Vega too, so it wasn't totally my fault that I didn't prepare for the cold. So then it got cold on Tuesday. Like cold cold. Like I had a sweater, and long sleeves and it wasn't enough. So I woke up on Wednesday good and sick.  But not sick enough to stay home, and even if I was I'm not gonna let being sick keep me from going to work unless it's like I'm missing a leg or something. So we went to work on Wendesday. But it was raining.  A lot. So we came home and I was more sick. Thursday it rained too. By that point it was like I could barely breathe my head was so clogged.  But I could still work, so we went to work. The best part was giving a blessing of health to a Sister in the Ward, and the whole time I was sniffling. So I asked Elder Vega to give me a blessing, that night, and then woke up on Friday good as new. So that was good.

I hope you guys have all seen the He is the Gift video. Because it really is something special. And it is flooding the earth. All of the missionaries here in Mexico, and I imagine much of South American too, have a goal to give out 10 pass along cards for the video every week.  And we are working hard to hit it. On Tuesday we gave out 15. Planning that night was super easy cause all we had to do was make back up plans for the all the references we had from the cards. So we started Wednesday with a ton of excitement, all pumped up to go do it again.  And nothing. There was no one. And it was muddy, I was sick, it just sucked. We came home straight whipped. Thursday morning was the same.

Muddy, sucky, no one in the streets, no one let us into their house, the people who were outside straight up rejected us, it sucked. But then the rain stopped. It got a little bit less muddy. We went to visit a less active member. She made us hot chocolate and gave us pan dulce, so that helped a little bit. Then she told us she wants to go to church. Also that her daughter wants to get baptized. So that helped a lot.

After that we went to go see if the family from the camera was home.

We have passed by a few times, but they've alwasy been busy or gone, but we were like what the heck we have nothing else to do. And they were home, they let us in, and we realized they are super cool. The dad was a pastor when he was 15, but then he got married and because his wife wasn't baptized in that church, he couldn't be pastor anymore, so he stopped going. But we taught them the Restauration and they ate it up. It was another time where the Spirit was practically visible. It was awesome.

Then we had Stake Conference on Saturday and Sunday, and two Seventy's came. They asked us not to come to the Preisthood session, and Elder Vega told me it was cause he thought they were going to drill all the brethren because honestly there is a bunch of just pure laziness here.  Like the city itself is just chill, and the people reflect that. And that suspicion was confirmed on Sunday night at dinner. Apparently they railed everyone. But the adult session later that night was awesome. They told us to be there for that one, and then Presidente Garcia and his Wife showed up, so we knew why. He gave a solid talk, and so did his wife, and then the first seventy, Elder Hugo Montoya, had all the missionaries stand up, and basically strongly encouraged the members to give us work. Service, references, time, rides, whatever, so that was cool. Then his talk was puro fuego. It was amazing. He talked about how going the first extra mile is sacrifice, but the second extra mile is in the territory of the higher law of consagration. Like bam. There it is. And then the other guy, Elder Valanzuela, gave an even better talk about the impact one person can have on the history of the world. It was a perspective changer. Like wow.

Sunday morning was the other session, and it was good, but not pure fire like the night before. They talked mostly about love and prayer, the things that missionaries need, so that was good.

Then we went to dinner, and after dinner, we went to go look for an address a contact had given us. She told us she wanted to meet with us, so it was one we had to find. When we finally found it and knocked on her door, she opened it and started right in telling us about how she had been waiting all week for us to find her, and not three seconds later was telling us how she was going to invite all of her friends for the next time we come visit her. She is literally better at missionary work than us. It was amazing.

We then went to go visit a less acitve guy who lives a few houses away from us. We read Luke 7 With him, where Christ heals the centurion's servant. And then this dude blew my mind. Remember how I was working on Faith this week? Yeah. He was like, "well the best part about this is that it was his faith. He was roman, and they hated romans at that time. But he had enough faith to make Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Creator of all things, marvel. When we have faith, nothing else matters, the Lord will take care of the rest." BAM. Right in the Spirit. i'm never going to forget that.

Hope you guys are all well.

Les quiero mucho,

Elder Rawlings