Cool conversion stories - 07/09/12

This week was pretty cool. We had two baptisms this week, and both of their conversion stories are pretty cool.

We´re going to start off with Ivonne. She is the larger and older of the two that we baptized, and I can easily say she has been one of the funniest people I have ever taught. She is a reference from the 2nd Consejero in the Bishopric, and he straight up told us that she gets bored of the missionaries.  So we decided we would try and be her friends first, and then once we established the friendship is when we started the teaching. It worked out really well, and she is a very dear friend to me. She surprised us by her dedication to reading. We left her a chapter to read one night, and we came back the next day and she had not only read the assigned chapter, but also the following 6 chapters. She reads more than my companion! Ha ha ha, I´m just kidding, but seriously, she would also go above and beyond with all of our assignments. She has tons of friends in the church, and I´m very proud of her progress. She really has come a long way, and I know that she will continue to grow and that the ward will take care of her.

We also baptized Alicia this week. She is a very sweet 10 year old girl. We have been teaching her since I got here, so a little over 3 months now. Their family has gone through a lot recently, and it was really moving to see how grateful they were that we passed by and brought them the gospel. They still aren´t exactly living in paradise, but they have the peace that comes from the Spirit and the desire to endure to the end. It was very exciting to see almost the entire ward show up to her baptism and support her. I was privileged to baptize her, and I´m grateful for the opportunity I have to help her along.

So basically this week was focused on having these past two baptisms. Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, but I´m used to it. Satan always has to try and ruin everything, but in the end we came out on top, like always. It was very stressful, but we are learning to cultivate patience and love. Oh yeah, I also had to give a 15 minute talk on Sunday. Moroni 7:43

I love all of you guys. Jesus does too

Elder Hansen