April 29, 2013
Howdy howdy!
It has been a fantastic week in the mission field. A couple of weeks ago Elder Cosman and I took on the task of visiting those who are less active in coming to church. We got a branch roster and started going through the names. I was surprised that some people said they didn't want anything to do with the church anymore... Really sad! Despite some rejection from already members, we indeed had some success in bringing some families back. I feel like all they needed was a visit from someone. Home teaching is no bueno around here and the members have been asked to step it up but it's just not happening. Before yesterday, average attendance at church was around 35-40. After having some less active members come, we got up to 53 yesterday. Our little chapel was almost completely full! I started my mission off having lots of baptisms and this area has been in a bad drought for a couple of months... I talked with my mission president because I was beginning to get discouraged but he told me this has been a very difficult area for years. Everyone around here sticks to what they believe and are not open to any new gospel knowledge. Very unfortunate. We've been blessed with two baptisms since I've been here but I feel it's not enough! Transfers are next week and I think I'm ready for a new area to start out fresh. I think now with more members coming to church, the missionary work in the branch will have a new push and install a desire in them to share the gospel. I'm glad I was able to reactivate those less actives.
Saturday was a very long day, so let me tell you about it...haha we did a service project as a branch for a member who's house was falling apart. Insulation was installed then it was our job to put the siding on. We had a great turnout there with a couple of nail guns so the job would've taken maybe 4-5 hours. But of course we had the opportunity of manually nailing all of the planks on the house with hammers because all of the nail guns decided to stop working. Funny huh? But it did feel good to do some hard labor work. After crushing my thumb a couple of times though I decided to hold the nail in place with a little pair of pliers and that worked out a lot better for me towards the end! Haha So we finished after about 9 hours of cutting and hammering. We picked up a new investigator from that service project so we will start teaching Shelby this week!
Love you guys and thanks for all the support!! I feel your prayers each and every day.. If y'all are gonna send me a letter this week, send it through the mission office because I don't know if I'll still be here next week, thanks!
-Elder Rios
Texas Lubbock Mission
6310 114th Street
Lubbock, Texas 79424
No comments:
Post a Comment