Dear everyone,
This was an interesting week, filled with ups and downs.
We had exchanges this past week with Elder Tovar and Buchanan. Elder Tovar is
the district leader in Pomona and he came to my area where I stayed. We started
in the afternoon, and it was a bit of a strange evening. We started off with a
lesson with Claudia and her daughter and it did not go well at all. It seems
like we are going to have to postpone their baptism for later now...
Later, we
went to our next appointment with a less active Hermana. What I forgot was that
she just rents part of the house she lives in and the owner doesn't like us for
some reason. So the second we knocked the door the owner came out pretty mad
and threatening to call the police and telling is to go to hell.
We decided to
keep walking down the street in which we came across a house where there was a
girl in a wheelchair sitting in the front. We stopped and decided to talk to
her. Her mom came out and it turned out that they were visiting from Mexico. We
showed them the "Because of Him" video on our iPads and the second it
finished, out came this bald cholito looking guy. He asked us if we were
Christians and he went on to explain how he was thinking of going to some
church that evening but decided not to. He told us about how his brother got killed
a while ago and he got mad and stopped believing in God and started praying
something called the Santa Muerte. The best way I can describe it, is that it
is a grim reaper image/statue that people give money and belongings to in order
for them to be protected by it. It is a pretty crazy belief that is common
among Mexican drug dealers and such (apparently). (Well
pretty much it's a false idol of a grim reaper thing. The deal is that you give
it money and whatever it wants and it'll protect you from death and such. It's
pretty devilish.
We picked up a new investigator who is into that and the first
thing you see when you open his door is a 2-3 foot statue of the Santa Muerte
with red eyes and candles around it and a bunch of creepy stuff. So the times
we've gone by this past week we have had the lessons outside so we don't have
to feel like satan is watching us hahaha)
He showed us is little shrine and it kind of
freaked us out, but we set up an appointment to come by
the next day.
So the exchange goes on and we're walking down the
street and we see a guy that looked kind of sad just leaning on his truck.
Elder tovar and I decide to talk to him and he started getting mad pretty fast
and telling us to leave. It got to the point where he took out a knife and threatened
us with it, so we decided it be better that we leave him alone haha. And the
night continued with stuff like that hahah.
The next day, Elder Tovar and I
started off with the lesson with Rigo (Santa Muerte guy). Neither of us really
knew what to expect since we had never taught someone like him, but we braced
ourselves for whatever to come. It turned out to be a great lesson. He is very spiritually
sensitive so through out the whole lesson he kept saying how he felt peaceful
and calm. What even impressed us more is how much the spirit taught him.
By the
end of the lesson he made a comment how he feels like he might be being
ignorant with the Santa Muerte stuff when through out the whole lesson we
didn't mention it once. He told us how previously he feels like he is starting
to come back to God and believe in Him more, so it seems like he has been
prepared and it was pretty cool because right before he was going to say the
last prayer to ask if what we shared was true, his neighbor was walking to her house
and he called her over and her sit down with us for a bit. We had a lesson with
him yesterday as well and he was just as awesome, so we are excited to continue
teaching him. Only setback right now is that he is on probation for a bit, so
we will see what happens with that...
We didn't end the week super well, but elder Merrill and
I are determined to pick it back up and find more of those prepared people out
there.
The church is true, God and Jesus Christ live and they
both really appeared to Joseph Smith to restore His gospel on earth for us.
Love you all!
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