Chase helps puts investigator at ease after not wanting to get baptized because he heard you had to be naked. Oh my..

Bueno, you know how I always say how fast the weeks go by? This was not one of those weeks. It just dragged on and on and on and on. I´m usually not a very stressed out person, but my first time doing transfers by myself beat me up. It's not like it was that hard to do... and luckily it all went well. It's just a lot of stuff to keep track of. I think the stress got to me though and I got pretty sick with the flu to top it all off. Being sick on the mission is not fun at all. You feel so bad because you can't go out and serve. I remember being sick at home, and while its always terrible being sick, at least you can enjoy a day of just resting and doing nothing. On the mission you always have work to do, puking or not.

In spite of the fact that being sick was very tough, that doesn't mean that I didn't learn a lot from the experience. The Lord definitely blessed me through all of the difficulties. Our teachings have been going pretty well lately and we have found some pretty great people that are very interested in the church. One of our investigators is named Eduardo. He is 22 and we have been teaching him for about 2 months now. He is a good kid, but he's pretty stubborn. He's been going to church with us, but just "to make the Lord happy". He never wanted to be baptized or do anything in the church, he just needed somewhere to go to church so that God was happy with him. After teaching a good lesson about the Atonement and the love of Christ he asked me if he could go outside and talk to me. We went outside and he said, "You have promised me so many blessings if I read the scriptures and go to church. For the longest time I thought you were a liar. I thought I was doing all of these things for nothing. However, yesterday I found out that you were telling the truth. You know that I've been looking for a job for a while now, and yesterday I found one. And not only that, I feel more peace and happier in my life. And not to mention, I feel stronger when I work out." It was so nice to see that the Lord does bless those who seek after him.. and to hear that I wasn't a liar. haha After he told me that, I started to asking him to continue with the faith that he has received and follow the example of Christ and be baptized. His response was, "Well, I've honestly been thinking about that, and I've concluded that I would like to be baptized... BUT my friend told me that the mormons baptize naked. And I'm not doing that." I quickly reassured him that we do indeed baptize with clothes on and then he accepted to be baptized! It's still going to be a process to prepare him to be baptized, but at least its a huge step in the right direction! Moral of the story, you never know what holds somebody back from being interested in the church or being baptized, and you'll never find out unless you ask them! OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND SHARE! What's the worst that can happen? You get rejected? Oh well, at least we can do our part and invite.

Hope you all have a fantastic week!

 

Here is Chase's response to a picture I sent to him of my Mom, Dad, Madison and I eating a Costa Rican fruit that he has talked about.

 

"lol you guys ate mammon chinos? They are my favorite fruit here in Costa Rica. That or the huge mangos that they have here. But you missed out on the cool outside shell that they have. Peeling them is part of the experience!The people here eat a lot of strange fruit here. Look up nísparos or juplones. I really like nísparos but juplones are the hardest sourest thing I have ever eaten in my life. And they eat all their fruit here when its green and unripe. Like they have mandarins here, but they never eat them when they are orange, they have to be dark dark green!"