Ether 12:6

Dear All,

Pretty freaking cool week. The Lord blesses us, but in his due time. I feel like my whole mission to this point has been an Ether 12:6 experience. We get no testimony until AFTER our faith is tried. And with faith comes dilligence, patience, obedience, everything. Two weeks ago just sucked. It was a hard week. This week was awesome. We just had to pass the trial of our faith, humble ourselves, be diligent and patient with people, and the Lord did the rest. 

We had one day this week, I feel like it was Tuesday, where no one was home. That kinda sucked. So we just decided to contact. All day. And when it was getting to be evening time, we saw a park in our area, a park that we pass by almost every day, but we had never gone in because there are always people doing drugs and other stuff there. But this time we felt like we should go in. I was not sure, so I didn't say anything, but then my companion was like "hey why don't we go to the park?" and we are in the point of his training where basically he's in charge, so I followed him. We walk in the gate, and we see a lady who was walking with her family stop, and stare us down. So, following normal missionary instinct, we contacted them. Turns out her friend had called her the other day and told her that she needed to go to church. So she asked us if we would please come and teach her and her family. The whole family was at conference on Saturday. Then we kept walking and saw another family sitting down. We talk to them and recognition floods over us.

Story: There is a guy in our ward with special needs. His name is Chuy. He's hilarious. He never goes to church, but he knows the whole freaking world. So every time he sees us, he asks for 50 passalong cards with our name and number on em. So we spend 10 minutes in the street frantically writing on the backs of these cards, and then we give them to him. Within half an hour he's calling us and asking for more. It's kinda cool. But anyway we were talking with him one day and he all of the sudden yells out "HENRY! VENTE!" (Henry, come here!) (also he has a funny way of calling everyone by the wrong name. He thinks my name is Sammy haha) so we didn't really even look up from writing. But then we notice that a guy is coming towards us. So Chuy introduces him to us, his name is actually Henry, and Chuy tells us he's gonna take us over to Henry's house to teach him. That was like 2 months ago. Chuy never took us to the house. So we contact this family and BAM there is the golden boy. He tells us he has been waiting for us, and asks us if we can't go on Saturday to visit him. We said yes, he lives close to the church where we were gonna watch GC and yeah. So in between the sessions we ran to his house, taught him, gave him a Book of Mormon, and set a quick little baptismal date. Pretty legit.

Also on the list of cool things I did this week, I gave myself an ingrown tonail surgery using a pair of sharp scissors and some tweezers. Don't worry I dunked em in alcohol to sanitize em. That hurt really bad but it was worth it. I just didn't want to go to the doctor cause they say that the shots they put into your foot to numb it hurt worse than just taking it out, so yeah. Logic. Plus Mexican Medical services are kind of hit or miss. If you doubt it, read one of my emails from april where I mention the lady with the hole in her foot and the pus that leaked out. Que asco.

Anyway yeah this week was chill. The Conference was awesome, I loved Elder Holland's talk. It made me miss you, Mom. You're awesome. Also I totally met Elder Montoya, he came to the stake conference in Ensenada when I was there. That was before he was a real 70.

This church is so true you guys. Yesterday some people tried arguing with us in the street but I was like "I'm not in the mood for this" and so we planched em. My companion was laughing when we walked away and he was like "I've never seen you like that" haha it was kinda fun.

Los quiero mucho,

Elder Rawlings