Hey Fam,
Alright well this week sure did go fast.. Wow! But I went through my journal entries this week to come up with stuff to tell you because I still haven’t missed a single day in the mission yet! It really has become my best friend out here, sometimes it’s hard to come up with things cuz of how tired we are some nights but I love writing!
To start of this week, we got invited to come over to a Noche de Hogar, Family Home Evening, by one of the members and we were stoked about that, until we showed up from a long day and she tells us she didn’t have time to prepare a lesson so she asked us to give a short lesson. Turned out to be perfect because Elder Broderick had mentioned a game that he had played in the south with some small young families and so we played this little charity game and had every write their names, write something positive about themselves and then just pass it around to everyone else for them to write something positive on it too. Hermana Lidia, the mom, or Grandma rather, was brought to tears watching her family have fun and start to show love towards to each other for the first time in a long time and it just turned out to be such a spiritual lesson as we bore testimony of the strength of families and importance too, it really made me think about the things that we really do have back home, and then to see what they have... truly was yet another humbling experience!
This week in our contacting we decided to change our tactic to something different then the plan of salvation and really just focus and push the Book of Mormon on everyone, turns out that was exactly what we needed. Every morning in our studies we would study about the book of Mormon and how to better use it in our teaching and I really learned a lot. Earlier in the week we had almost straight contacting and we started just going all out to introduce everyone to the Book of Mormon and earlier for literally 4 hours straight one after noon we just did all we could to talk to everyone about what we have and how rare this possession really is... we had no success at all... until after the trial of our faith. It was literally the last 2 housed that we contacted that we got into and taught two just really powerful lessons. Now you probably think that that sounds wrong to contact for 4 hours and not get into the houses, especially here in Central America.. But its amazing how caught up the people in our area are in the traditions of their fathers. The majorities of the people have been talked to once before and just tell us they have their own church or they think that our church is of a man and they don’t want to listen to us. We have seen people in their houses and get up and run out of the room when we show up. I’m not one to complain but just to explain what happens when we don’t have success here. Its hard and gets to us sometimes but it never fails that we do get into that one house and talk to them about this amazing book that we have! We placed almost 10 book of Mormons this week, the hard part is getting the people to tell us a time when we can come back and they will actually be there. Regardless... I know we are doing what we need to and fasting and praying a lot to find people and I’m sure we will strike this golden family eventually!
Speaking of Golden people... Our little Diamond in the Rough from last change that we make the 45 min Hike every other day for... accepted baptism this last week, I just forgot to tell you last week. But right now we are just working on finding a time to talk to her husband to get them just married by the law! Its been really hard to talk to him because he is never home, but she told me and Elder Broderick that she read in the BOM and prayed about it and KNOWS that its true! She ALWAYS reads everything that we give her and it just was the most spiritual lesson when she basically bore her testimony to us about the fact that she knows that our church is the true church and so we of course felt prompted to ask her to get baptized and if it weren’t for her marriage she would be baptized! She is just so amazing to us and truly has become a really good friend of ours, its always worth the 45 min hike! Really is!
Something funny for ya’ll too ha-ha our neighbor and Cocinera lady had her birthday on Friday and invited us over for her party later that night; we were stoked about that cuz we had seen the cake and all the food that she had bought. Ha so we show up for dinner at our usual time and there’s all kinds of family and friends there and they are just blasting music and sitting in a big circle talking and what not! So we were starving so we go in and have some food and while we are eating everyone is asking us if we want a beer and almost forcing us to take one, which is dumb because they all know we cant have coffee... but they try to give us beer? ha its was funny and then when we finished they tell us to go in and start dancing so Elder Broderick jumps up and goes into the room and starts just dancing really funny and of course all these Latinos just love it because we are both just as greengo as they get and here we are dancing and making fools of ourselves. Ah it just was so much fun and now we know that the next time we run into anyone that was there that they will invite us in because they know that we are NORMAL people and we know how to have fun to. But who knows if we were in the wrong for having a little fun but its was worth is! Cake and food was amazing! ha-ha
Anyway that’s about it and I’m about out of time, but for everyone that is reading my emails... thank you all for your support and prayers. They are being answered... yo les prometo! Yo se que este Iglecia is the Iglecia de JESUCRISTO y El nos ama. Dios es nuestra padre celestial y tiene un plan para nosostros. Un plan para felicidad, un plan de misericordia! Tenemos lo mismo Iglecia de Jesucristo su mismo establecio en la tierra.
Sorry i just felt like doing a little Spanish there but I love you all, really really do! I hope you all have an amazing week and I love you all so much!
Cuidense!!
Love Elder Gardner
