Wow, well a lot of things have happened since I have been transferred to here in Republica! my companion is great! Elder Wagner is a great guy! He is so humble and nice! Truly, it amazes me! He is ending his mission this transfer, but he still has his head turned on straight! And we are pumped for the month of March!! Woo hoo!
But to describe my sector a little bit . . . it's not like any other sector I have had before in my mission! We are right by the limits of the Santiago East and North missions, so we are in the heart of Santiago which consists of a ton of buildings! ALL OVER! Ha ha! Our sector is just super tall buildings, apartments, businesses, and universities. There are a TON of people in our sector! But the thing is that they are all on "the go" and they just go, go, go. Ha Ha, it's a little hard to contact in the street because they are all running to work or school or something. And if you can talk to someone in the street there's like a 10% chance that they actually live there because a lot of people come to our sector just to work or study.
As well, we have a lot of apartments, buildings with 20, 30 floors! But we can't enter the buildings unless we have a name of a person. And once we have the name of the person we have to go to the doorman and he will call their apartment to see if they are going to let us in. So it's pretty hard to get into houses in this sector! But no me importa!! Ha ha, There is a will, so there is a way!! HA ha!
As well, there are a ton of foreigners in this sector! Santiago is full of them! I have talked to a lot of people from: China, Haiti, Columbia, Ecuador, USA, Dominican Republic, Japan, Peru, Argentina, and Mexico! There are a ton of foreigners! It's awesome! They are usually better to get into their houses because between all the super tall buildings there are tiny little passages where there are like 20 houses all back to back to each other. So we kinda got a little of everything!
Thursday we had Consejo de Guerra again which was 7 hours long! But it was amazing!! President is such an inspired man! It was just 7 straight hours of doctrine and revelation! Our mission hasn't been achieving as much as we should be and part of that is because January and February is vacations and it's summer time and there are a lot of people away. But now it's MARCH!! It's the next inning now and it's game time!!! We have planned to baptize 120 people this month and reach 7000 attendance in our mission! Both have never been done for a really long time! But we know it's the time! And that means we have to give it our all!! I'm so pumped!!! You can just feel the excitement in the air in our mission!
We had a zone conference Saturday to be able to share the same vision and goal with all the other missionaries! While there I got to meet my grandson, Elder Rutty, form Peru! It's awesome having Elder Kimball in our zone! We are a little bit smaller as a zone, but the missionaries are awesome!!!
Then we got to the tender mercies that we started to see at the end of the week. To be honest, the week was pretty slow, there aren't many investigators and a ton of people our still out on vacations. We were basically walking all over the place. It was pretty hard just not having anything. But it's all fine now! We decided that we are just gonna think that we are in white wash and we are going to resurrect this zone! My comp and I have talked a lot this week and even though by numbers wise it was probably the worst week we have had in our missions we know we have to be better! We have a lot of ideas to work with now and we are pumped to be able to have this sector rise again!
The secret: The Atonement. We are focusing a lot on the Atonement this transfer and just how Lehi, Enos, and Alma experimented with the Atonement in their lives they had a stronger desire to share it with others. And for this it has been amazing studying the Atonement for this past week. Even though the sector is dead, basically, just as the title says, Come What May and Love it! And that love comes from our Savior and from His loving sacrifice of His Atonement!
When we started focusing on that, that was when we were able to start to enter a few more houses. We had a miracle Saturday with Ilde! We contacted him in the street as he was changing his tire and told us to come back again because he asked us, "If God loves us, why is there suffering and so many bad things in this life?" As we gave our testimonies to that question it sparked his desire and we passed again Saturday. And man, is he prepared?! As we started teaching Lesson 1 about the Restoration at the very beginning, he also asked us, "If Christ is the Savior of the World, why did He only visit the people in Jerusalem and not in other parts?" And he had like 5 or 6 more questions like that! It was amazing! All of his questions were directed perfectly to the Restoration!
Ilde loved the part of Pedro, Santiago, y Juan coming to give the priesthood to Joseph Smith. He told us "Oh well, there you go! That makes perfect sense! Cause they were the last ones to have it!" Ha ha, he is amazing! It was a huge answer to our prayers and fast that we did this past weekend. We almost put a baptism date with him, but he wants to take things serious and really wants to dig through the scriptures in the Book of Mormon for his answer! He is awesome! It was such a tender mercy to find him!
I'm grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ. I know the only things He asks of us is to be humble and to have a broken and contrite spirit. I know He loves us soo much! And thanks to that love, He promises soo many blessings for us! But only if we are humble and if we have a contrite spirit. I know that this truly is the work of salvation. And thanks to the Atonement of Jesus Christ He broke the bands of death and atoned for our sins that made it possible for us to receive this salvation. And since He did it, we have to work as He wants. I know that if we put our pride and other desires on the table and turn them over to the Lord, we can become instruments in His hands! How wonderful that it is! I love my Savior. I love every day He gives me to be his representative and for the chance to know him more personally day after day. This is the best experience ever!
Love you all!
Elder Cowan
No comments:
Post a Comment