I love the stories Jonah tells about the people that he meets and how their lives are changed. Sometimes seemingly 'simple coincidences' become life changing interventions and blessings from our Heavenly Father. Jonah has a great story exemplifying this with Hermana Hoyianí.
Hey, this week has been quite wonderful! We were blessed with a lot of different things and we had one of the coolest spiritual experiences of my whole mission. It was a great week :)
So on Tuesday, we had our last zone conference with the Casa Grande and Guadalupe zones. It's always great to see them because they have to come in from a little further away (Casa Grande is an hour away and Guadalupe is around 3 hours away). In the fotos that I uploaded, there was one with 3 other missionaries and me. They are Elder Rios, Elder Olsen, and Elder Moncada. I trained Elder Rios, Elder Rios trained Elder Olsen, and Elder Olsen trained Elder Moncada. SO COOL!! I love these missionaries, they are all so great. Every one of them works so diligently and have such great attitudes even when things get rough. Anyway, we had a great conference that Tuesday and it was great to see all the missionaries from my past zone in Casa Grande.
Later on in the week, we had such a great experience, that was more of a string of events that really showed how much God does to make people meet in the most precise times. Before I got to the area, Elder Nuñez and his companion had met an hermana and her daughter that came from Chimbote (2 hours south of Trujillo) that had talked with missionaries and was almost baptized, but a lot of difficult things happened the same week that she was going to be baptized and she had to leave everything and all of her belongings in Chimbote and come to live in Trujillo without even knowing anyone here, knowing where she was going to live, or what she was going to do to make money. Elder Nuñez was only able to teach them once and then they kind of disappeared, and we had only heard from her over the phone and she was struggling a lot, but could never meet with us. So last Wednesday, we went to go eat out at a place that we had never eaten before and when we were leaving, we happened to run into this hermana (her name is Hoyjaní), so we sat down with her there in the restaurant and talked to her for a little while. She told us that everything was pretty hard right now, and that her daughter got into a car accident and is now in physical therapy and that her work was going really poorly. We encouraged her but she was not convinced of doing something different yet, but we set up a different appointment and went to go teach her again on Thursday. When we got to her house, she wasn't there. We were disappointed to find that her phone was off as well. We started heading over to a different person, when we found Hermana Hoyjaní walking towards her house. We stopped her and began talking and expressed her worries about her daughter and work again, when we remembered that someone we had just met was looking for someone to help take care of someone with poor health. We offered that to her and called the person up right there to ask. We passed the phone over, and it turned out that Hermana Hoyjaní had a lot of experience in the field and was a certified nurse. She set up an interview for the next day and seemed very pleased but very quiet. She asked us if we could go to a park to talk with her and so we found one close by and sat down on a bench. We started with a prayer and talked to her about the blessings she has received and what she can do to thank God for them. She seemed much more sincere and willing to change. At the end of the short 10 minute lesson, we asked her to offer the prayer. She began to pray and then began to cry and expressed her love for God and for all that He was doing. She asked for forgiveness for not looking for the Church and the missionaries sooner and promised that she would be more diligent in seeking Him. She ended the prayer and we all had tears in our eyes and had felt the Spirit so strongly. It was so incredible. Today, she called us at 12pm and told us that the interview went very well and that she will hear back this Thursday. She also told us that she had made sure to get Sundays off so that she could come to church. We are so happy for her and are having so many great experiences with the Spirit! We love helping people so much, but we are not good enough to fulfill all of our desires, so that's when God comes puts everyone where they need to be at the right time. We are praying for her that she can get the job and start to live the Gospel.
We are doing great here and we love every moment that we're here. I love being a missionary so much! So many miracles are seen as a missionary, and it is so incredible to be a part of it. I love you all so much! Have a great week!
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| Elder Babbel → Elder Rios → Elder Olsen → Elder Moncada |
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