Week 59: The Plot Thickens!‏

As the Garcia Family continues to prepare for Baptism, I keep worrying if I'm actually going to be there to see it or not. You see...the Changes are coming up on the 16th, and if I stay in the area I'm gonna get to see them make this covenant, but if not...

Man, it's quite the predicament.

Speaking of tough situations, we are floundering to find some new investigators here, mainly because we have been leaving the office at like 6 o'clock every day. I don't know what's happening! I feel like we don't have too much stuff to do, but for some reason it takes us forever and a day to actually get it done.

Who knows. All I know is that I'm having a blast here in Montufar with Elder Prestwich, that we're working hard and seeing a lot of fruits of our labor. So...who am I to complain?

This week has flown by faster than I could say "Quidditch." I've seen pretty much everything, from Doctor's appointments, to councils to pep-talks to baptisms...and also some "knock-your-socks-off-good lessons" that were completely guided by the spirit.

So many things to say, and I'm really not sure where to start.

But I think the very beginning is a very good place to start:

Sunday: we ended up running around a huge chunk of the Capital picking up investigators, trying to bring them to Sacrament meeting. From what everyone had told us the past week we were going to be looking at an incredible attendance rate (too bad August wasn't a "counting month" ;)), but that morning pretty much all of our investigators bailed on us. Minor and Veronica said that they were visiting relatives in Santa Fe and wouldn't be getting back until that evening, we couldn't get a hold of Erika, Bryan, Beverly or Krissi, and all of the less-active members weren't coming to the door when we knocked.

The only person who had really gotten to be consistent was Ana Victoria. It's really interesting to see how committed our young investigator has been. She has come to church on her own every Sunday for over a month now. No questions asked, she just rides the bus with her friends to the regular meetings. It's so funny, because Ana has been helping to fellowship Krissi and Beverly...and she's not even a member!

You know...yet (...keep reading).

So it was kind of hard in Church...because not very many people came. My companion and I sat down on the bench next to the Franco's, defeated. It feels like, no matter how much I do, I really can't seem to feel like I'm "on top of things."

Elder Walton leaned backwards from the bench in front of us after the sacrament. "Hey...aren't those your investigators?" he asked, his eyes flashing between mine and my companion.

"Who?" I asked, scanning the room for a familiar face.

And who would've guessed it, Erika and her two daughters were sitting in the back row, listening attentively to the talk about eternal families.

That, my friends was a miracle.

The rest of my week seemed to follow suit. Miracle by miracle I kept feeling better and better. I went to Doctor Aminibar's office on Tuesday to have my stitches removed, I am so happy to find out that I'm almost done with all of this crazy cyst-ness. I am so tired of telling the same story about what happened to my hand over and over and over again. It's time to move on to a new chapter here...

The only problem was that I asked the Doctor if I could start doing push ups now that I have the stitiches out. He promptly informed me that I would not be able to apply such intense pressure to my wrist for another 2 months!

How am I supposed to get super buff if I can't do push ups?

On Thursday I went on divisions with Elder Mann, my Zone Leader. It was really cool to talk to him, he's a great, humble missionary. He was in my first Zone when I entered the Mission Field, and as we were in an awesome lesson with Minor and Veronica I realized: It's been a year since I first went to San Juan, and La Florida...and so many things have happened since then! 

Even cooler was that it had also been a year to the date that day since I first met Elder Mann...and now we were doing divisions telling each other how that year was for us.

We had two very spiritual lessons, and I learned a lot from my good friend.

But, all in all the crowning moment of this week came at the very end, this morning in fact when Ana Victoria was baptized. It was the first baptismal service that I really had to prepare myself, because my companions would usually do it for me, but it turned out very well. We saw a lot of support from some member families and Ana even brought a few nonmember friends to the service! Sitting there that morning I felt refreshed and happy, ready to go out and keep finding and keep helping people to come unto Christ.

Minor and Veronica came to the service, a little bit early before everyone else, and it was really funny because Minor told us that "If Ana doesn't show up, you can baptize me instead right now!" He has been so well prepared! I sure hope I get to be there when he and his wife are baptized (on the 27th).

We'll see....

-Elder Monson