Hola!

This week all of our appointments fell through.  We have 4 investigators that we are really focusing on to come to church so that they can be baptized but... we have not been able to find them ALL week!! It’s terrible. We have 5 sundays this month and one down with a big fat zero investigators in church as of yesterday. So 4 weeks to really work my bum off and get people coming to church on a regular basis.  This week has been a week of learning for me. And I have learned a lot. Let me share these few things with you. :)

We got a little letter from the Area Presidency of Chile to all the mission presidents and we were asked to read it.  I have been trying to put everything I learned into practice, like talking to everyone that I see about baptism. So that’s my focus right now. I want to baptize. I am always thinking about it. It’s what I want to achieve.  I always wanted to baptize but I’m making it even more of my focus so that other people when we teach them, know that we want them to be baptized and if they don’t accept it and don’t want us to come back. it’s ok.  It’s the best way to find the people who are really going to put forth the effort to complete with baptism.

As of yesterday we´ve had some great success. We contacted this lady and she was really awesome and then started to talk about her family and we talked very briefly about the gospel and then asked if we could share more with her and she invited us in. We went in and started by singing her a hymn (I am a child of God) which she loved soo much that she started to cry. It was perfect to invite the spirit and totally set up the lesson. We talked about Faith, Repentance and Baptism briefly and she liked it so much she told her sons friends to come and listen to us (while we were still talking about faith). So one of the friends came to listen (he´s never been baptized). They were really great and really special so we are going to be passing by for them again this week. But the thing that got me was when we were finishing the lesson and we prayed we were preparing to leave and the lady asked us to sing I am a child of God again for her and her son’s friend. So we did and she thanked us and said she´ll be waiting for us to come back again on Thursday. Awesome!! :)

This week we had interchanges. I went with Hermana Isaacson from Orem and we went to her area. She´s companions with Hermana Paz so that was really fun to be able to see her as well.  We did a lot of contacting and almost all of the contacts we did were really great and they are going to be passing by for them again. I learned a lot from Hermana Isaacson. She was companions with one of the Hermanas from Mexico that was really amazing and she passed on a lot of great advice of how to do contacts and teaching, etc. So when we do the contacts we focus more on them than getting inside to teach them. We get to know them for like...2 min and then start to ask to share more with them. It works really well so that you can enter into the house and start to teach them. If someone comes up and just says we´re missionaries and we want to teach you a message about Christ, a lot of the time here and especially in our area they say they are Catholic or Christian and don’t need to hear a message of Christ because they already know Christ or are with Christ, etc. The point is to first get their confidence and then ask to share a message. To show concern for them first and their lives and then they feel ok to invite you inside.  If I just say we want to share a message, even though they are doing a lot of things to get ready for school or cooking or with kids, etc., it’s stressful, so instead of doing that I ask to come back another day when they are less occupied and they then feel respected and tell you the day and time you can come back. That was really long to explain that but it’s just something that I’m trying to put more in practice. 

I love you all and I hope you are all doing well and are happy :) stay strong and do what is right, always :)

Con amor,

Hermana Tycksen