Thursday, December 4, 2014

War of the Worlds

Date: January 14, 2013
Area: Santiago, Chile

Hola Familia,

Sounds like, once again, you all are doing really well there in....well in whatever parts you are in. haha.

This week was decent, it wasn´t outstanding but it wasn´t bad either. We acually have changes this week and I was surprised on Sunday when President Essig called and asked me to keep serving as zone leader and to also train this coming change.... So, Lindy, I actually could train that Elder that you met in the MTC a few weeks ago=) I wasn´t really expecting to be training this change but oh well, it looks like that it is part of God´s plan so I´ll just have to go along with it =) But it will be fun, you always receive so many blessings when you train so I am very excited for that.

But this week we really did have the war of the worlds. I have to paint the picture a little bit. We live in a house but in front of our house there is a nother house where we store all of our things for safety ever since the robbers came and jacked our stuff (not cool!) and so at night after getting home and planning we usually go to the other house for stuff. Oh, and there are no lights in our patio or in the house in front, they cut the power to that house. So it was like tuesday or wednesday (after a day where it was VERY hot, like 100 or so and it was still really hot in the night) but i went out and i noticed something black running around on the ground. Taking a closer look i realized that it was a cockroach! I glanced to my left and I saw another one and suddenly I glimpsed another blasted black beetle scuttling around behind me. and I thought to myself ¨this situation calls for.... (duh duh na na!) RAID!!!! and so I ran back into thehouseand shouted ¨HAY CUCARACHAS!!!!´ And i headed out to battle. I made quick work of the first three that I saw but that seemed to enrage their creepy friends and before I knew it I was surrounded by about 10! But reinforcements quickly came to my aid in the form of my alcohol and match weilding companions- we would not be defeated so easily. We battled, smashed and burned those 10 cockroaches and thought that we had the easy victory... little did we know that the 10 that they had sent our way was really just the decoy because as we went back into the house and as we passed by our patio that is filled with fruit trees and is all dirt, we found the mass of their army waiting in ambush for us! They charged and we defended, and we counterattacked and burned with the alcohol and the flame thrower of raid! It was a night I will never forget. We probably killed 150 cockroaches and we left the others there because we ran out of ammunition... it was very intense! =) and disgusting. but we made a video so I will show you one day.

But on a more spiritual note, we do have one investigator that is starting to progress. She is really really cool, she has cancer but is really positive about it. She knows the Book of Mormon is true and she believes that what we teach her is true but she is really struggling in taking the next step of Baptism. We taught her about Joseph Smith and we left her the movie, The Restoration, and we went back the next day to see how she liked it. She said that it was a good movie but she had a hard time believing that Jospeh Smith was truly a prophet because his life was too much like Jesus´ with lots of persecution and trials. We basically bore our testimonies and it was really good and we committed her to pray about Joseph Smith that night. Well we went back a couple days later and she had a good experience to share. She said that that night she was in her room and was going to pray about Joseph Smith but first she was going to read a little bit from the Book of Mormon from a part we left her. She said that she lost the part that we had left her to read so she just opened up to another page and started to read. Well she opened up to Mormon 9 and that verse 7 really hit her. It talks about not denying the revelations of God and the gifts, healings ect by which God works. That really hit her hard and she said that she prayed after not to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet but to give thanks to God for having told her that he was a Prophet. It was really a cool experience. It strengthened my testimony that God answers our prayers individually and he does it in a way that each of us can recognize and many times that is different for each person.

Spencer, Congratulations!!! That is AWESOME! That your papers are in now! A week and a half and you´ll know (hopefully!) I am putting in my guess. You are going to go to the Ecuador guallaquil mission. Thats my guess=) We´ll see.


Thanks for everything!

les quiero,

Elder Jaromy Holland

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