Week 52 Halfway there!

Hey everyone! This Wednesday I hit the halfway point in my mission! Feels like this last year has flown by! But I've enjoyed most it and I've learned a lot. I can honestly say I'm not the same person now as I was when I left for the mission and my testimony is 100% stronger now than it was before. 

This last week flew by, I'll let you in on what happened

-We have a friend named Julio (he's the only friend we have at the moment....) but we had a great lesson with him on Friday and he said when he receives an answer that the Book of Mormon is true he will be willing to be baptized! He has a lot of potential. Tomorrow we have another visit with him and were hoping that he will receive an answer soon so he can be baptized. 

-We met a family that came to church this last week and their 9-year-old son isn't baptized. He's the boy I talked about next week who just arrived here in Spain and were going to work with to get him baptized and so the whole family can be sealed! We're trying to settle on the 25th for the baptismal service but were still waiting on their response. I'll fill you all in when I know more!

-We say a miracle at church with 6 less active members attending church! We have been meeting with a lot of less active members to try and help them come back to church and lots of them came! We had a very high attendance this last week, around 55-60 which Is very good for the branch! We have a goal of having 70 members attending by the end of the year so we're doing everything possible to make that happen

- On Sunday I gave a talk about revelation and I included a talk from President Eyring about sustaining our leaders in the church. All the leaders are called by revelation and the way we show God we're thankful for the revelation and for calling leaders to help us, we sustain them. But what does it mean when we lift up our hand to sustain someone in their calling?  It means we will support these members in their responsibilities, pray for them, and go to activities they plan. We do all we can to help them and when we do that God will bless us through these leaders he has called. 

I'm excited to start this second half of my mission and I'm thankful for everyone who has supported me and has helped me to get to this point in my life! I hope to hear from many of you! 

Elder Keith 

(Today we went to a popular tourist spot called San Juan.  I'll include a few photos from our adventure today)

Week 51 Un Poco de Todo

It's been a few weeks, I'll have to fill you all in on what's been going on!

So last week we received a reference from a missionary in Mexico of his brother who lives in our area who is less active. So we put ourselves to work to find him. 

On the reference we had a phone number but it was incomplete, it was missing a number. So we couldn't use it but there was also an address attached. So we went to the building and there are 40 apartments in the building and the reference didn't include an apartment number.... so we rang every apartment to try and find him. We didn't find him so we returned a few days later and rang them all again and still no success. So sitting outside this building thinking how we're going to find him, I get an idea  to search for him on Facebook. In one minute I found him and sent him a message and he responded right away. He was completely receptive to us and so we met with him and now he's coming back to church! We've been seeing a lot of success with meeting with less active members recently!

Also yesterday we received a message from a recently moved in family of 3 days. They're all from Colombia and all members, except for their 9 year old son!

He has not been baptized but has been to church for a long time so he knows quite a bit. Because he wasn't baptized at 8 it's our job as missionaries to teach him, so this member wants us to come over this week to teach their son so he can get baptized as soon as possible! So in a few weeks we will see if there's a baptismal service!

Also this last week, in a day super rainy outside we took some time to call some numbers in our phones of people who potentially have interest. And we found a man named Julio. He is a man taught by missionaries a few years back but recently he's had more time to meet and is more receptive to our message. We met with him 2 times this last week and the last lesson we did was very spiritual and in his prayer at the end of the lesson he began to cry because of all the emotions flowing through him. He has a lot of potential and he's shared with us that he's very open to being baptized so we will see in the next lesson if we invite him to be baptized soon!

That was my week, I'll attach a few pictures! Have a great week everyone! Let me know how your week has been.

Elder Keith 

The pictures are a lot of photos of my area, such as the bay which all our area is connected to, a castle on the edge of the bay, and a meal a Bolivian member made us called Silpanchu.