April 12 - Blue Week

Hola!

So first of all the title doesn´t mean that I had a bad week or anything, it’s just that we baptized a little girl whose name is Azul! So I thought it was kind of funny!!:)

Azul is just yet another amazing story of how the Lord is blessing us here in Churubusco. About two months ago we were walking down the street, and we heard someone just yell Elders!! And here in Mexico City, no one, like usually not even members call us Elders, they all call us the brethren! So we turned around really fast and saw Azul and her sister Jocelyn and her mom Mari walking there. We went up and started talking to them and we found out that Mari and her family have all been members of their whole life, but right before Azul turned 8 they went through some really tough things and they stopped going to church. Azul had been asking her mom for about 2 years now, Mom, when can I get baptized??

Well, the Lord sent me and Elder Penrod to answer her question! In a matter of two months, Azul and her entire family have come back to church!! The daughters are some of the strongest members of the primary and the young women’s organizations in the ward! Azul is the most intelligent little girl ever!! I have never seen someone so excited for their baptism like her! She asked Elder Penrod to baptize her (what a cool opportunity, because its probably the last time he will be all in white as a missionary! :)) And then she asked me to give her the gift of the Holy Ghost! One of the pictures attached in a big letter that she gave me to tell me thanks for accepting to give it to her. My heart swelled up with an immeasurable joy as that little girl thanked me!!!:)

 

The baptism went super smoothly, and was a nice spiritual service. Her dad who isn’t a member was there and told us afterwards that he could barely talk for the knot he felt. The primary put together an awesome little choir that sang I like to look for rainbows, and Azul was just beaming that they would sing just for her. Her sisters gave some awesome talks as well!!!

This Sunday was just another incredible experience here in Churubsco. First of all, Elder Penrod and I got to the goal that we had set for Sacrament meeting attendance! My first week here, we were a whole 85 people in sacrament meeting and two days ago we finally got up to 140 which is the goal! But, even better than that it was my favorite Sunday, fast and testimony week! The best part was right after I gave Azul the Holy Ghost, she was the very first person from the whole congregation to bear her testimony and she just got up there and started thanking the whole ward, and telling everyone how happy and loved she felt.

President Mecham was in our ward this week, and it was amazing to see the expression on his face as this little girl expressed her joyful experience of being taught and baptized. Then Alexa from the Olivares Puebla family (who still hasn´t been baptized, but we are making slow progress) got up and shared a testimony about prayer. Then Elder Penrod and I both got up and shared our testimonies and it was such a spiritual experience for the both of us...Just all in all the meeting was great!!! We had two investigators named Dulce and Ivonne who were there for the first time with us, and they left feeling such a strong spirit! I love when that happens!

The last big news from last week was how Elder Penrod and I rose to be even better in our leadership position. We held a big ´´pump up´´ zone training last week, where we pretty much tried to help people realize what we have realized, this is God’s work, these are His children, He is pulling for us, the ones that make it hard are us! We just need to let it go, and just work as He wants and not be our own worst enemies and get in the way. We then invited the Spirit to help us set goal of people to find and baptize these next two months. And well, it must have worked because the goal for April is double what we had in March, and then the May goal is double that goal! Wahoo!

Then yesterday, Elder Penrod and I decided to truly help the missionaries in an even bigger way than ever before. We have a ward here where there are four hermanas and well we know very little about how the work is there because we can’t do exchanges with hermanas. But, they have been having difficulty finding new investigators, so we went and spent almost 5 hours of our day over in their area just contacting everyone that we met, and we had so much success! We were able to give the hermanas a bunch of references! Things are looking up here in the Churubusco zone!

Elder Stout