Hard But Good Week

Yoshwal's Baptism on Saturday!

F a m i l y !

Sunday picnic of "scraps-of-whatever sandwiches

This week was hard but good. We worked a lot and found some families that I'm excited to teach! We also got the most rejections than I've ever gotten in all my mission! People actually told us we couldn't come in. It was weird. Whenever Dominicans want to politely reject you, they seem to always start out with "Hm, how do I tell you...?" I heard that phrase more than a few times this week.

We dropped quite a few investigators this week, or some of them dropped us. Yanela got baptized into the Evangelical church, Berta just plain old wasn't progressing after several months, and we can't ever find Yira anymore, plus she never came to church. Jeremy has all the lessons but he's been super flaky the past weeks. But it's okay because while contacting, we found a bunch of people that are excited to hear the word of God.

Pretty mountains in Resoli

Also, this week, we did a lot more exploring of our area. There's a tiny residential town called Finca 6 and it's a 40+ minute walk down this carterra with nothing but selva (jungle) for forever. At least it was pretty, and we saw bazillions of MANGOS the size of footballs just hanging in the trees. Hna Rubio got some and carried them in her backpack the whole way home. We never actually made it to Finca 6 because it took too long and we wanted to get back to town in time for Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening) with our downstairs neighbors. This week, we cut out time on Friday so we can get down there with enough time to do some contacting.

Spanish is still frustratingly slow, and Azua keeps losing power, and heat is hot, but things are just fine and I'm going to recommit myself to working extra hard this week. We have a baptism to look forward to on Saturday! His name is Jose and he’s 8 years old, and he goes to a Bible school that teaches him a lot of interesting things.

Story: We've been trying to find Alison, a reference, since General Conference in April. We stopped by his house the other day and met his dad who told us Alison wasn't available. We just talked with his dad for a bit and found out he's actually visited our church before. We asked if we could share a scripture before we left.  My comp let me choose what we could share with him. I flipped to 2 Nephi 25:26 in the Book of Mormon:

And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, 

we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies,
that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins. 

I was going to explain that our purpose as missionaries is to invite people to come unto Christ, and then bear my testimony, but then I saw I had a line in verse 23 highlighted.

For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren,
to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace
that we are saved, after all we can do.

I decided to share this with him. My comp read it and he said, "Amen, thank you." Then he wanted to read it again and the second time, he got goosebumps and said, "Oh sorry, I don't know if that's the Holy Ghost or what!" That scripture just really seemed to resonate with him, and it made me really happy. 😂 We're going to meet him again later this week to start the lessons!

Love you lots, family! You're always in my prayers.

Love,
Hermana Ludlam

Fancy "Tamo Heavy" Shirts (We're Cool!)

Foot Update:  Good! The top layer of skin got too brown and started shredding