Tender Mercies of the Lord

This week....where do I even start!! This week was full of the spirit and miracles of the Lord. We have this investigator named Rubén, and he is super great, but he doesn't want to pray about the Book of Mormon because he wants to read the whole thing through all the way before he prays about it. We weren´t sure what to do because he needs to know if it´s true if he´s going to progress. During our studies we were thinking about him and what we could do and nothing was feeling right. Hna. Wood then says that we should pray, so we kneel down and pray. Afterwards we don´t say anything for a while and just look through Predicad Mi Evangelio (Preach My Gospel) and the scriptures while thinking. I then had a thought that we should read a part of it with him, and then we could kneel down right then and there and have him ask if it was true, and I felt like he would receive his answer. When I reached this point I asked hna. Wood what she had been thinking. She tells me, "I´m not exactly sure how we could do this...but if we could read with him and then have him pray....i feel like he would receive his answer." Wow. Talk about a powerful moment. We knew that was exactly what the Lord wanted us to do. So we went into the lesson with him and the spirit was so powerful. We read parts of Moroni 10 with him and then we asked him, "If you knew that the Book of Mormon was true, what would you be willing to do to follow Christ?" He then answered us..., "What wouldn´t I be willing to do?" We just could not believe it. So we invited him to kneel and pray with us, and to have him ask the Lord if the book of Mormon is true and....he said no. He said he would rather do it when he was alone and all was quiet. Man, that was disappointing, but I learned a lot from this experience. We did what the Lord wanted us to do. Rubén has his own agency...his ability to choose and we could leave, even though things didn´t turn out how we had wanted, knowing that we did what the Lord wanted us to do.

   Another miracle that happened this week...his name is Brandon!! We have this hermana in our ward and her brother lives with her. He´s 17, not a member, but is super smart and knows a lot about God and everything. We had almuerzo (dinner) with her one day and he was there. It was my first week there and I was not being a good missionary because I just thought he was a member so I didn´t even ask. Then later Hna. Wood told me he wasn´t a member so I was kicking myself because I should have asked and tried to find out. Thankfully, the Lord had a little mercy and gave me another chance. We had almuerzo at her house last week, and he was there again and we were able to talk to him and teach him lesson one. Just before we left we asked if we could meet with him again....this is where the miracles begin. He said yes, and when we returned we had such an amazing lesson. We asked him if had been able to read the Book of Mormon and he said that yes, and there was a part that he read and loved and he wanted to share it with us. He opened to Alma 7: 15-18 and read it to us, about repentance and baptism. I hope you can look it up and read it. Afterwards he started talking about repentance and baptism and the things that you needed to do to have sincere repentance. He talked about how he needed to repent and be baptized.....!!! However, when we invited him to be baptized he said that he wasn´t quite ready yet, but he believed that he would get there and that we could continue to teach him until he reached that point. Afterwards we were talking to his sister, the lady who is a member and she started thanking us. She said that the missionaries have tried to meet with him so many times but he has never accepted a second appointment before. It was so amazing.

     Yesterday at church....we had more miracles!! We have been teaching this girl named Ayelén. Her parents are less actives and haven´t been to church in about 8 years. She´s 16 and has a baby and the missionaries had just started to teach her when I got here. They live way far away from the church and they have been wanting to go for a while, but it´s hard for them because if they can´t use the car they have they have to walk and it´s about a 30 minute walk because the buses don´t pass a lot on Sundays. However....they came yesterday!!! The dad came for the first time in 8 years and brought Ayelén and her sister as well. Ayelén is so great and when we went to visit them later that night she started talking about her baptism and asking what it was going to be like.

     I feel like the Lord has been blessing me more than I can even imagine. This ward is amazing, and even though I feel soo...undeserving of all the blessings the Lord has given me, I´m so grateful. I know that this gospel is true even more than I know that the sky is blue. I hope that you never ever let anything come in the way of always putting Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ first in your lives. I hope that you do all you can to help progress the work of the Lord because he has so many blessings just waiting for us! How amazing it is to have a God that loves us more than we can imagine, and when we take the time to count all of our blessings, there´s no room left to complain.

Cuídense mucho,

Hermana Feldermann