Week 10 or The Fallen

Okey dokey family and friends. This week has been awesome and super hard. We filled up our future investigator sheet with names. There are 5 sheets and every one has 19 lines. I hope that this means we are working hard. We also have 2 more weeks until the transfer to get a new one and restart and add all of our investigators. Anyways, I love the food here. Its awesome. I remember when I was in the CCM and I thought that the food was horrible and super boring, so I think that means that either I have adjusted to boring food or we actually get good food. We still walk a ton as usual, up the mountain, and then down the mountain. Its awesome and I am hoping that my calves will just be huge by the time I am home. I got to play the guitar this week a little tiny bit in the night time at the house. I have missed that so much. I don't remember hardly any songs but that's fine it just felt good to play again. 

Last p day we hung around and did like nothing. A little shopping, I almost bought a guitar. Luckily I get to play the piano quite often when we are at the chapel. This p day we played soccer and ping pong and watched coco in Spanish! We don't cook a ton - sometimes we will but others I don't have time or don't feel like making anything. I have not bought many souvenirs because there is no time to buy it haha but I don't need anything! Just trying to work hard and stay busy. Transfers are every 6 weeks, but I am in training so I am like this for 12 weeks most likely.

Funny story this week, Elder Wilson and I sleep with our window open and when we left the house this day we didn't close our window. It rained very much this day and the rain got inside the window onto my bed, (the bottom bunk) The rain soaked my bed and sheets and blanket and pillow. This was at night time that I found this out so I had to sleep on wet sheets that night and it was great. The whole night I would like wake up and try to put something underneath me so it wasn't as cold. I guess it was a good change from always being hot. Or it was just what I deserved from saying it is always hot. IT has been suuuuuper hot this week. Elder Wilson and I walk outside to go to a lesson and we almost die. I love it so much haha. 

Okay, our investigators and the mission stuff. We have had a rough week this week with lessons falling through. We scheduled around 45 lessons. It was crazy and we were ready to die from teaching lessons. It was going to be so worth it. We even put back up lessons for almost every single lesson that we have scheduled. I would say we probably had around 55 or 60 lessons that could happen. And for sure 45 because we scheduled them with the people. Anyways, we started our week and it was going well, we set a baptismal date on Monday with a 17 year old kid named Cristian. He was super awesome and loved our lessons. But the next day we went to one lesson they weren't there, the next and they weren't there and the next and the next. And so on. This just kept happening. We had 10 lessons that we actually tough this week. Out of 45 scheduled. I thought to myself how could this even happen, we had a secure proof plan and we dropped so many lessons. So as we were sitting thinking about what to do one day during the week, the bishop called us and said hey we are doing a move right now can you guys help and we didn't have anything so we went. We helped and that night we got a family of future investigators that was 6 and then also the moving guys which were 2 or 3. This was just a super big relief for us and a major blessing. 

Later in the week on Saturday we went to Cristians to make sure he was going to church on Sunday. We stopped by and he wasn't there, his mom was going to check him into a rehabilitation center to stop smoking and using drugs. We were super bummed because we had just taught him the word of wisdom and he agreed to stop and he even said it wont be easy but I know it is possible. This was really hard for us and we were bummed. We looked at it as, we had lost a baptismal date and a church attendance and an investigator. But then we realized he has two siblings and we can teach both of them and they would probably want to hear our message as well. So we are going to go back this week and teach both of them. During sacrament meeting, I realized we only had two investigators in church which was a bummer because we had 5 people there last week and 5 is our goal. So I was sitting there kind of bummed and listening to the testimonies of the members. And all of the sudden our investigator Gabriel got up and went to the pulpit and bore his testimony of the church and of the missionaries and he knew it was true. I was so happy in this moment and my mind was caught away in the spirit. This is what has happened after every difficulty that we have had this week. Behind every challenge or difficult time, we have blessings come up and our challenges are taken away.

I know that this church can change lives, because its changed mine. It has changed my way of thinking, I was so caught up in these challenges that we were having with our lessons and with people not being there that I forgot to look around and see the blessings that we have had. I was not grateful enough for what we had been given. If we had just focused on the lessons we had and the people that we were teaching then we would have known that god blesses us every single day. I wake up and speak a language that I have only practiced for two months and I can communicate with latinos and people around me. This is a miracle and a blessing. I love this church and everyone in it. It is a way for people to change their lives and be happy forever. 

Thank you everyone for the support and all the love that I have received. 

-Élder Goudie