What a week it surely has been. I sure hope you all had such an amazing week and an amazing time with your families during the holidays. I have a couple of experiences I want to share with you all this week.
This week was really tough. They say the holidays is the best time to find people to teach because families are together and everything, but it has been super hard. Absolutely no one will let us in their house. We have contacted for 3 to 5 hours every day this week because we don't have any appointments because everyone is gone or busy or they don't want to accept the lessons this week. Anyways, we were planning our day on Wednesday and as we were thinking where we should contact, this road popped into my head. It's called Callejon Number 5. So I wrote that down and I said we needed to contact this street today. So we got there and what a Callejon here is it's a tiny street in the mountains and it's just straight stairs with houses on both sides. So we knocked on every single door and we literally got to the last door and I was like this is it. So this younger guy answers the door and he lets us in. We taught him and he accepted another lesson. What a tender mercy that was for me. I really think he is an awesome investigator and can be baptized. I'm so excited to teach him again.
So right after that lesson, we went back to contacting in another Callejon. We heard people working behind the first door and my companion was like, they're busy and he was going to move on to the next door. But I told him that we will help them. So they answered the door after we had knocked and they were reconstructing this house. They were mixing a huge pile of cement on the floor so we asked if we could help. And they said you'll get all your clothes dirty. We said we don't care so we grabbed a shovel and starting mixing this concrete. After it was all mixed, this man went up on a ladder sort of thing and we filled buckets of cement and handed it to him. He filled in all of the walls.
So we finished this entire mix of cement on the first floor and then we moved to the roof of this building and we mixed another huge batch of cement and did the same thing. It was so crazy. We literally didn't stop working for like 2 hours straight. But it was so awesome. I was so happy the whole time to help these guys out. I was able to work the two hours without stopping and I know Heavenly Father helped me out so much because it wasn't easy work or anything that I was used to. And there were only 5 of us with me and Elder Sac. But what an awesome experience that was. My shoes were literally cement and so was my shirt. It was awesome. I will attach a picture sometime so you can all see.
My last experience is quite the experience. So we got invited to have dinner with two members we know yesterday for the New Year. And they are both about 20 and the only members in their family. Anyways, in this house there are aunts and uncles and cousins and everybody, but only two members of the church. So we ate and everything was all good and about 30 minutes before we left they started asking some really crazy questions and they gave us this drink. They told us it was just grape juice, but thanks to the Holy Ghost I knew it was wine, so me and my companion refused to drink it.
Then the last little bit, they just tore me apart, asking me questions like am I attracted to the girls here and things like that. I told them I wouldn't marry anyone outside of our church because I will be married in the temple and they told me how ridiculous that was and all this other stuff. They basically talked a lot of smack on me and the church. I'm so surprised with my reaction to all of this, in a way. I just shared my testimony and was really calm about it. After I got home and we were in our apartment, I went outside and I was really mad inside, but for some reason Heavenly Father blessed me in this moment to just be extremely grateful for this experience. So, I said a prayer and I told him how grateful I was to have this experience and how I knew that it was tough right now, but in reality it was nothing. I really wanted to be so mad and just talk back to them and stuff, but He allowed me to have patience and respond in a respectful way, even though they weren't being respectful at all.
I'm so grateful for each and every one of you. And I'm so dang grateful for this opportunity to serve our Heavenly Father. Good heck, it's so dang tough right now, especially with the language and everything, but what a huge blessing in my life. I hope you all have an amazing week and you all get an opportunity to share your testimony. I sure do love you all so much. Keep doing it!!!
Elder Blake
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