Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Bob Esponja

Hola muchachos,

Did you know Spongebob was called Bob Esponja in spanish? People love him down here. The funny thing is I love him down here too. Not that I watch it, but my love for Spongebob has been carried with me from one country to the next.
This week was a good week, and we are beginning another change week which I feel much more prepared for this time around. We found out changes yesterday whcih is always good fun, and President and Sister Brough invited us over for breakfast this morning to talk about a few organizational things we needed to talk about. I ate 4 pieces of bacon, 4 more pieces of bacon than I have eaten with a breakfast in a long time. It was good time. So we are preparing for that and getting all the transportation together for the next week with all the new missionaries and the missionaries that are going home or the "baggies" as the mission lingo calls them.
In this week we have been able to see some progress. I would like to share something we have seen with a less active member named Roberto as nothing significant has happened with Jose, he continues going to church, but he continues to have strange ideas and doesn´t want to set a date for baptism. It has been amazing to see the progress with Roberto. We have been visting him for about a month and it was "well we have nothing else to do visit" because so many missionaries had tried with Roberto. Elder Lydiksen told me he was essentially a lost cause and couldn´t stop drinking. We visited him and didn´t hink much about it.
When Elder Cruz came and a cita fell through that we had around his house I thought I would give another try. We taught something to Roberto and he expressed a strong desire to come back to church but he thought it was too difficult. We had finally found something to work with. In the next few lessons we started to talk about why he was baptized and what his desires were for his future. He expressed a strong desire to go to the temple, something that kind of threw us for a loop. This man who we had found drunk in the street 3 days before had a desire to go the temple. We went from there and started trying to get him to go to church promising him that as he did his part and occupied his time with good things, he would be able to get over drinking. 2 Sundays ago he finally went. He was incredibly nervous because he had been away for so long and stuck to the missionaries (even thouhg everyone in the ward was incredibly happy to see him) and from there everything has changed. We visited him that very afternoon and found him reading his scriptures (with his shirt off with his fat guatemalan belly hanging out, very typical of older men here). We asked him how church was and he said ti was great. He talked to us of how he had never recieved the second priesthood and really wanted to by this October. He said he felt the need to change his work as that was what was cuasing him to drink a lot. The very next day he went out in search of a new job and much to his surprise within 2 days he had found work that had a set schedule, and now he feels such little temptation. It is always humbling to see what real repentance his. Someone changing his mindset and attitude to be closer to God. He seems so much happier and has a hope now that he is returning to church. It is too bad hiswfie doesn´t want to. Anyways that has really impressed me in the last 2 weeks and I thought you would like to hear about it.
I´m doing well, and I hope everyone else is doing well back on the homefront. Take care and have a great week.
Love,
Ben


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