Hello everyone!Hi I hope you all had a great week. That's awesome news to hear where everyone is getting called to serve -- tell Travis congrats!
Tuesday we went on splits with the assistants to the President. Elder Richerdson came to San Rafael with Elder Boon,one of our zone leaders, plus Elder Lee (my district leader) and his comp, Elder Amador. We went on spits for a few hours and I went with Elder Boon and Elder Amador and we just contacted for a couple hours because the citas we had fell through. Afterwards Elder Richerdson, Elder Lee, Elder Benitez (my comp.), and I went to a cita we had with Adrian and Cynthia. Cynthia is still having doubts about getting baptized, she is Catholic and I think her mother has been trying to convice her to not join the church. So we talked about the importance of prayer and praying to know that chruch is true. At the beginning of the lesson I had the strongest impression to bear testimony of Joseph Smith, and so when it was my turn I asked Adrian and Cynthia if they remembered the first time that we taught them. We taught them about the Restoration of the Gospel and about Joseph Smith and I asked them if they believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. They both said they did and then I testified that basically if Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet than the book they were holding in their hands,The Book of Mormon is not true and The Church of Jesus Christ isn't true and we as missionaries are just wasting 2 years in Costa Rica. But if Joseph Smith was a prophet than the Book of Mormon is the Word of God and The Church of Jesus Christ is the only true church on the earth. Then I re-commited them to pray to know if Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God. It was pretty awesome and I almost started crying as I was speaking.
Thursday was an interesting day. While we were doing our comp. study Elder Lee called and talked to Elder Benitez about interviews with the President for Friday. After he finished talking to Elder Lee, Elder Benitez thought it would be funny to play a little joke. He told me that Elder Lee had said that something had happened in my family and they were going to call me in the night to confirm what happened. Well when he said this I started to freak out. I honestly thought that someone had died in our family and for some reason I thought that person was Nick (sorry but he is the only one who is accident prone) and for the rest of the morning I could not concentrate at all, I was freaking out big time. I honestly thought about calling home. So for the rest of the morning I was freaking out and then we went to lunch at our Branch President's house. I was super depressed and super worried and its probably the worst I've ever felt in my whole entire life. So after I finish eating, I excused myself and went into the bathroom. While I was in the bathroom, I felt awful and so I decided to say a little pray to help me calm down. I prayed to know that my family was okay, especially Nick, and after I prayed, a feeling of peace instantly settled over me and I knew that everthing was okay back at home. The rest of the day I was able to focus and I had another interesting experience.
In the afternoon we had a lesson with a contact and after the lesson we only had one hour before our cita with Adrian and Cynthia. So we had two options, knock doors for an hour or go to another cita that we had with Olga and her two daughters--we had taught them the first lesson last week. The thing was Olga lives like 20 minutes away from Adrian on the mountain. So we would only have about 10 minutes to teach a lesson. I decided that we should pray to know what to do. So right there in the street I prayed and asked Heavenly Father how we should spend our free time--knocking doors or go visit Olga's family. After I prayed I knew that we should visit Olga. So we went all the way to her house and had a really good lesson about the Book of Mormon. They are Evangelican and had lots of questions about the gospel. We showed them scriptures in the Bible and had a really good lesson. Also one of her daughters, Pamela who is 13, wrote me a love note and gave me her phone number. Haha! I translated it into English so I could tell you guys what it said, but I forgot it so you will have to wait till next week. Haha! It was very funny! When we got back to the house I found out that Elder Benitez was joking earlier--boy was I relieved but not thrilled about his choice of a joke.
Well, on Friday we had interviews with President Galvez, but this time, President and Sister Galvez came to our houses to do the interviews. My interview went very well and President Galvez is awesome. He and his wife really care about us and are always making sure that our health is good and that we have everything we need. Also President commented on how my Spanish is very good. So we also had to move our cita with Adrian and Cynthia from Thursday to Friday because of our lesson with Olga. We taught them the Word of Wisdom and it was a good lesson. Adrian is ready to be baptized. He needs to do is stop drinking coffee and come to church. He doesn't have to big of a problem with coffee--he drinks 1 cup a day in the afternoon. Suprisingly, Cynthia said she will try to stop drinking too. This is interesting because she says she still doesn't want to get baptized but she is commiting to do all the things we are asking them to do. Also, she reads the Bood of Mormon more than Adrian does. So I'm fairly confident that there are some issues with her mother and that is why she is hesitant to got baptized.
So yah, other than that not much else happened this week. We just worked hard all day knocking doors and spreading the message. Now that my Spanish is getting better I don't mind knocking doors too much but it's really not an effective way to get investigators. It's much more effective to work with the members! So I hope you all have a safe, fun week! I love you all and please stay safe!!!! (Especially Nick) Love, Elder Anthony Smith
