Sunday, March 22, 2015

Power of prayer


Dear All, 
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!! One year older, but who knows if you got any wiser. Haha kidding love you and hope you spend it well.
So yeah I`ve got to catch you up on two weeks. Sorry about last week, we went on exchanges and Elder Lopez forgot that Monday was Pday and put an appointment at 5, and then everything went wrong, so yeah. Whatever. It happens.
So two weeks ago we had some super dope experiences. But everytime I tell you guys about them, something falls through. But I want to take the risk on this one, cause it has been the best experience of my mission so far. So sit down, grab your scriptures and popcorn, and let`s go.
Alright, first off, we are going to be in Alma 8 in a little bit, so just get that ready.
So thursday morning, I was studying a little bit about prayer, and I started thinking about how we have to pray specifically in order to get specific blessings. And we need baptisms. And in order to get baptisms, we need people to teach. So when we started our companionship study, I prayed that we would find a family of 5 people that day. But not only that, I prayed that we would find the couple legally married, with kids at the age of baptism. And more than that, I prayed and told Heavenly Father exactly when and where we would find this family, beecause we had seen a new neighborhood from the bus in Sauzal, and its new enough that we didnt think that missionaries had ever been there. So we had planned to set apart about and hour and a half and just go knock doors. So I said, `Father, this is where we are going to be from this hour to this hour. And in that time we will find this family` and yeah. We ended the prayer, Elder Lopez kind of looked at me weird, but whatever. We studied, and at the end he prayed for the same thing. When we left we prayed for it again, super specifically.
Then we went to our first lesson. In the middle of it, we got a call from an investigator. We were teaching her a while ago, but her husband doesnt want anything to do with the church, so we cant really do anything. And so we hadn´t seen her for some time. But she called us and said she wanted to meet with us, that day, in the chapel. I looked at the planner and was like ¨Well, ok I guess, but we aren´t gonna have all the time in the world to go knock doors. Oh well, short lesson and yeah, then we go find this family.¨ So we set an appointment, and met her there. And then the lesson went super bad. I was planning on like 20 minutes max, but she did not stop talking. And then Elder Lopez started talking and we just lost control. 2 hours later we were leaving the chapel, and it looked like we might have time to go knock 5 or six doors in this neighborhood. Not great.
So on the bus to this neighborhood I started praying a ton in my head, asking that in this little bit of time that we had that the spirit would show us exaclty which door to knock to find this family.
So we get to the neighborhood, and this is where you want your scriptures. In Alma 8:13, Alma tries to preach in a city, but he is straight up rejected and thrown out. Keep that in mind. We get to the neighborhood and see a giant gate. And a security booth. And large walls. Boom. Figurative getting thrown out of the city. But we kept seeing cars going down the road and turning at the corner of the walls, and then heading to where we couldn´t see them. Now read verses 14-17. We were pretty bummed out, but something told us to go follow these cars. So we get there and see another gate. But this one was open, and the security booth was empty. Kinda like in verse 18. We just had to go in the back door. 
And then as we walk in, the first house I see is at the top of the hill, and theres a minivan outside, and I kid you not I thought to myself ¨Minivan=Mormon family¨ so guess where we knocked. And a super friendly lady came out. We started talking, find out that they had been going to church in Monterrey, but since they moved here they had stopped going. But they told us to please come back when the whole family was there so that they could find God again in their lives. And when we asked how many people were in the family, they told us the magic number. Father, Mother, Son of 14, Son of 13, and Daughter of 12. 5 in total. Every single one of them now has a baptismal date except the dad. And they are a super cool family. They`re all geniuses. Its so weird.
But the weirdest part is this (and this is for you mom) the lady is a floral designer for events, exactly like what mom does, and one of the days that we went to visit them she got a call and had to leave suddenly to go deliver her flowers. And so we helped her. And there we were, loading flower arrangements into a freaking Dodge Grand Caravan, exactly like the one we have. Holy heck that was like deja vu on steroids like wow that was weird.
So yeah that was like the best thing that has happened. We also found another family of 4, plus another guy, so in total right now we have 9 people with baptismal dates. The problem is that tranfers are coming up in two weeks, so I probably wont get to see the majority of their baptisms. Oh well. I´m doing like it says in Preach My Gospel, leaving the area stronger than when I found it.
I love you all and love reading your emails. Keep being good, keep reading the scriptures and always say your prayers.
Les quiero mucho,
Elder Rawlings

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