Monday, June 21, 2010

Wonderful Experiences

Well this week has been full of many things, but I will start out with a really cool experience that happened with one of our investigators named Cloudia. I will first tell you her history. She has been sick since she was 12 w/ having random spasms or seizures. She would go through times without remembering what had happened and often hurts herself or if she is holding her child and has a spasm, she ends up doing something like throwing the baby or hitting him/her. Its been a really sad story. She is pretty beat up from all of this and has just been living day to day with her medicine and almost never leaves the house. So her husband found the church about a year ago and was baptized after 3 weeks. It was awesome and he is a spiritual giant. Anyway, he commutes to see her and her kids because the only job that he could find is about 45 min away by bus. He comes home Wednesdays and Thursdays to be with them and works the rest of the week in the other town while she lives with her family. Now to the almost present. She has been receiving the missionaries for about a year now and has never made a commitment to be baptized. She has read the BOM but still is unsure about this commitment. Now to us.

So we were walking on the road and a little girl came running towards us saying mi papa mi papa (My Father, My Father) wants to talk to you. We look further down and see this giant of a man of solid muscle stalking towards us. We were a little nervous thinkig that maybe we knocked on his door and he was coming to tell us not to do it again. lol We had no idea. But anyway, he ended up explaining to us who he was and invited us to come and teach his wife (Cloudia). We have been teaching her for about 3 weeks now and have just started over with her with all the lessons. Sometimes when she gets an attack she forgets a little so we have been verifying every lesson with what she remembers. She has never been to church and has never wanted to be baptized. Anyway, this week, she was having a hard time and was having her problems more frequently, therefore, we offered her a blessing from a priesthood holder. She accepted it and so on Tuesday, she received the blessing and had not had a problem until Saturday. She had a little lapse but we explained to her that everything is based on our faith and that the Lord often heals in stages to test our desire and our faith. Like when Christ healed the blind man, it depended on his faith and he healed him twice. The first time he began to see but everything was blurry and couldn't tell a tree from a man. Then the second healing he could see everything. Christ often works in stages with us like in the Book of Ether. We will not receive an answer or, in many cases, a blessing until the trial after our faith.

After this experience, she was really different. When we went to visit, her she was all smiles. She never smiled. Never. She was so happy she was just glowing and she felt different. She said that after the blessing, she has just been experiencing a huge gust of heat coming from within her spreading to the tips of her fingers down to her toes. We talked to her and taught her about baptism and the importance of it and she accepted to be baptized even before I got through the question. lol It was an amazing experience and I was so happy to be a part of it. I love my mission here and all the wonderful experiences I am having and that the Lord is blessing me to be a part of it. Well, I have to go but I love you all very much and please keep praying that we will continue to find good people and that they will be open to receive answers from God to this message.
Love amanda

1 comment:

  1. I believe your mission is great. You should feel like you are conquering the world after what you did and what you are still doing. Salta is a beautiful province and needs help from all of us. I remember when I travelled to Argentina, I was staying in one of those buenos aires apartments and my mission was to understand the way economy works there to be able to help the poor in an innovative way. I loved it!
    Brooke

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