Hey family,
How's it going? I’m doing great, we had a long and stressful
week trying to prepare Leo for his baptism last Saturday. Basically Leo really
wanted to move his baptismal date a week forward, and it was all fine if he
allowed us to teach him every day, so that he could be ready for a baptismal
interview on Wednesday. And so we talked about the priesthood and temples the
rest of the week. it was really great, Leo (or Leandro Obregon) understands well the doctrine and is very
receptive to the spirit due to his past being active in other churches. I’ve
been very grateful to have had the opportunity to teach Leo, because my time
with him has been some of the most spiritual moments of my mission. By Saturday
the ward, his family, and we had prepared a wonderful baptismal service. Tons
of people came to support Leo. Luckily he lives with a very active family in
the church, who called up all their friend to help out, it was especially
wonderful because it was such a late notice to announce the baptismal, due to him
passing his interview Wednesday night. His cousin Federico performed the
baptismal ordinance and Elder Mario confirmed him a member of the church. It
just so happened that right before the baptism was a seminary activity tled by the area seventy, Elder Levrino. So he attended the baptism and was
asked to speak by the bishop. It turns out that he already knew Leo because Leo
has been going to institute and Elder Levine is the teacher of the class, so he
gave a really awesome testimony of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the
path Leo was taking in his life. And Leo was freaking out after telling us that
he feels really bad because he didn’t go to institute the week before, he was
like “Dude, I got to go back to institute". He only went two times but
he'll be there next week.
Other than preparing Leo for his baptism, we spent most of
our time planning how our other investigators are going to get to church,
and how to motivate them. All of our other investigators that want to become
members of the church, have problems coming to church. They are some of the
best investigators I’ve had in my mission, because they read the scriptures,
pray, come to activities, and always do the things that we invite them to do, but
for some reason they can’t get up at 9:30 in the morning to go to church. So we
sent members over to their houses to visit and verify on how they are going to
come to church, who was going with them, and we did the same. I was 100% sure that
someone other than Leo was going to come to church, and no one did. We even
went to their houses in the morning to make sure that all their plans were
working out smoothly, knocking on doors and windows. And no one wanted to
answer us, and instead they pretended like they were sleeping. It was beyond ridiculous, and
super lame.
I was super happy for Leo, but my feelings about these other
folks were getting in the way. I’m telling y’all this because my companion was a
lot more depressed than I was, so much that he had asked me to give him a
blessing. and I was really surprised by his request, because none of my companions
had ever asked me to give them blessings in the mission, I had never asked any
of my companions if they needed one or if I needed one. Because when I get sad
I always just tried to get over it on my own. And so I was surprised. I gave him a blessing, and I was impressed and humbled by the experience. There was a love and peace that was felt during the
blessing and we were able to move on and work and not get too worked up about what
happened.
It was a great week, I love you guys and pray for you
Elder Greene
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