Week 34

Hola Everyone!

As always, I hope you all had such an amazing week and yet another opportunity to serve those around you and to feel the spirit!! I have been reading a book called Our Search for Happiness by M. Russell Ballard and it's SUPER AWESOME! I have also been thinking so much about our investigators. There are a lot of times we have to pass on investigators and I just can't quite understand why they won't accept the Gospel or can't understand the story of the Restoration of the Gospel. It's super crazy. Just about the only thing we ask a lot of them to do is read the Book of Mormon, ponder in their hearts if it's true, pray and ask God, and go to church. For some of them it's such a hard task that they won't even do it or maybe it's so easy they just don't want to do it. It's super hard because we've had to drop so many investigators that I know have felt the spirit because they won't pray or go to church!! Anyways, I wanted to share one of the experiences I had this week.

So we had two baptismal dates for the 21st of this month and we have been working super hard with these investigators. We even cleaned the entire house of the sister that we're teaching. It was actually really fun! Anyways while we were planning our week, we had the feeling that we needed to fast for them, so we ended up having a special fast on Saturday for them. So we got to church on Sunday super early and we were waiting and really excited to see them all come to church so we could follow through with the baptism this week. Anyways the sister that we've been teaching for probably about two months didn't come. It was really tough and it was super tough on my companion as well. But I just looked at him and said sometimes we just have to accept the Lord's will!

I learned a lot through this experience and the biggest thing I learned was accepting the Lord's will. It's something that is not easy at all, but I have an extremely strong testimony that when we accept His will, there is no doubt we WILL be blessed.

I'm so grateful for the gospel in my life and I'm blessed to have the chance to see it bless the lives of my brothers and sisters here in Oaxaca!! Life is not easy but we will be eternally blessed as we continue to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ in our lives. I love you all so much and I'm so grateful for all your amazing examples in my life. Just keep moving forward and don't ever look back!! Have an amazing week everyone.

ELDER BLAKE

Some pictures. The bus picture is how they protest in Oaxaca - they block all the main roads with buses so people can't get from place to place. It's pretty crazy. And the food is what I had for breakfast today!!