Dear Family and Friends,
Wow entonces, we had some difficulties in the Internet place today so I have been trying to write this letter for sometime now and now it's finally all working out! So this might be a little shorter of a letter but it's alright! You guys will be able to hear everything personally in only 3 weeks! Wow soo weird!
But to give an update right away of our investigators. We have been able to focus a lot more on Erlipper this past week and we were able to have him accept baptism! Woo hoo! We were pretty frank with him but he understands that through this whole time we have been sharing with him, he has realized how much he really has learned.
So he attended church yesterday and he liked it a lot and as well his wife came with him too! So we put the date for his baptism for this next weekend the 25th! Wooo hoo! We're gonna start off and finish the month with a baptism! Woo hoo! So we are really excited for Erlipper!
Another cool thing is that Shirley who just got baptized a couple weeks ago, already has a calling in the young womens and now is attending our missionary meetings with the zone! Ha ha, she loves it! We are hoping that she will be able to like it enough to make the decision to serve a mission! She is amazing and she is progressing so fast! It's amazing to see!
Another investigator that is progressing really well is Maria Ignacia. I don't know how much I have written about her, but her dad is a recent convert and her mom is inactive in the church. She isn't a member and is deaf. But even though she is deaf, it is AMAZING to see how the spirit really touches the hearts of people. Elder Daniel and I have been learning Spanish sign language and we can do a lot of stuff now so we're pretty impressed at how fast we are learning. And what's even more amazing is how much Maria Ignacia wants to learn! She is reading the Book of Mormon and is communicating with sister missionaries in the States that talk in sign language!
She has had a lot of things happen in her life that have really helped her to learn that God really does exist and loves her. She even has had a couple near death experiencias (diagnosed with a disease as a kid, and a couple months ago she was in a very serious car accident) but in each experience she has explained to us at how she really has felt the Lord protect her.
I love teaching her! Because it really is 100% depending on the spirit! Aww its so amazing! And it was awesome to see her come to church yesterday! She has so much faith! She even wants to serve a mision that way she can come back to Chile and teach everyone else the gospel here since there are really no recourses to help deaf people here in Chile. But she wants to be the first! She wants to be the pioneer for the church in helping everyone possible!
And another amazing thing is Gabriel. Aww, this man is sooo close to getting baptized. I was on divisiones with another elder and we went by the family and found out the Gabriel had snapped and gave into the temptation of smoking and smoked a whole box of cigarettes, but since he has been barely smoking his body reacted really bad and made him sick, which really was a tender mercy because now he can see literally how smoking is hurting him. I was able to give him a blessing and it was really powerful.
He stayed in bed and I felt prompted to share something with the rest of the family. We read Ether 12 and talked about the faith. I invited them to show more faith to stand up against Gabriel to really help him accept baptism. They all got really motivated and in the next lessons that we had on Saturday and Sunday, it was amazing to see how his sons and wife started to double team against Gabriel and really stand up and testify to him of the truth and importance of this gospel. Usually Gabriel has a strong character, but the sons didn't have any fears and had the courage to testify back to him.
Last night we was accepting almost everything and really was leaning more to the idea of getting baptized. He is soo close! Really! I can feel it! Please be praying for Gabriel! We are gonna see if we can challenge him to get baptized this weekend with Erlipper!
So that is a quick update of our investigators! It seems like we will be having a couple baptisms these last couple weeks of my mission, which I'm truly grateful for! I love this mission so much! I'm grateful for each and everyone of you too! Justin and Stacie keep getting better! Trevor and Kiersten! Hope everything is well with the pregnancy. Blake! Be safe out there in the Philippines. And Mom and Dad thank you for everything that you do! I love you guys so much!
Love
Elder Cowan
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