Week 29..... Focus on your conversion!!

This week was an amazing week for us here in Los Sauces. We are seeing the Lords hand start to work in the lives of the people here. It is so amazing to see, each week there is improvement. This week we had 36 people in the church. The church was literally full. It was so amazing to look out over the pulpit and see the whole church full of little brown Chileans! We are seeing so many miracles here!!!! 

This week we had our first investigator in Church, our first one here in Los Sauces. I am going to tell you a little bit about her and her situation. Our investigator is named Francisca. She is 12 years old. Her sister, Nicole, was just baptized about 2 months ago in another city. Nicole recently moved back into her house, so we were going over and teaching her and we found Francisca. We started off by only including her in the lessons. Our focus was Nicole and keeping her active. We would go over there about 2 times a week and teach lessons to keep her active and stay strong in the church. We invited them to English class and all the activities what we have been having. Francisca always came with her sister. So the other day we were teaching a lesson with Nicole and we felt the prompting to invite Fransisca to be baptized. She accepted. We were super stoked. She has so many questions... so we have been helping her get through all her questions, but she really is improving. We went over last night and we had a really spiritual lesson with her. We gave her the Book of Mormon and we started reading it with her. We started reading 1Nephi 1 where Lehi receives a vision from God, but he only receives this vision after he prayed "with all of his heart" and then he read!!! We were testifying to here that if she would read and pray with all her heart she will know if these things were true. So, after the lesson we invited her to pray. Then we did something really cool. We told her after she prayed and said amen, we were going to wait in silence for like 15 seconds and just listen to the feeling of our hearts... and listen to what God wants to tell us. So that is exactly what we did. It was honestly one of the coolest experiences in my mission. In those 15 seconds the spirit was so strong. When I looked up she had her head down and was really wanting to know what God was going to say to her. When she looked up, her face was lit up with happiness. We asked her how she felt. She said her whole body feels warm. We knew the Spirit was speaking to her. We are so excited to go back this week and teach her. I really think we are going to get a baptism. She has a date for the 28th of April. We will work with her to prepare for this day. I love Los Sauces!!!!!

This week we also had our Branch Easter Party. It was by far the most successful activity we have had. We had 60 people come!!!! It was so awesome. We had a little Easter egg hunt for all the kids.... It was so awesome because the kids were so excited. I was in charge of blocking the door so the kids wouldn't run out and grab all the eggs. I almost got ran over by 35 little kids! It was a really successful activity and a lot of great relationships were created. We are so excited for the Branch... It is improving so much.

This week for my spiritual thought, I want to share a scripture. The Scripture I want to share this week is:  

Alma 5:26:

"Y ahora os digo, hermanos mios, si habeis experimentado un cambio en el 

                       corazon, y si habeis sentido el deseo de cantar la cancion del amor que redime,quisiera preguntaros:¿Podeis sentir esto ahora?" 

This scripture is one of my favorites... I dont really know how it goes in English,but it is something like this "If you have experienced a change of heart, and if you have felt the desire to sing the song of love, I ask you, Can you feel it now? This scripture has such great meaning behind it. I love it so much. This whole life is about focusing on change. In this scripture it talks about what happens after the change. He asks. Can we still feel the love we felt right after the change? Many times in my life I have had great changes, but then over time I begin to stray and forget about those changes.. the changes don't become as dominant as they  once were. I lose the feeling I used to have. But in the scripture it asks, can you still feel the love and the reality of your conversion and your changes? This is a question I asked myself this week. Do I still feel the love of my savior? Do I still feel the changes in my life? I spent this week really focusing on my conversion, and all that has happened over the past year of my life. I started to get the feeling back that I had during those times. It was such a big testimony builder for me, because I was able to see the changes that I have made and refocus myself. I challenge you all this week to look back on your conversion story and remember the feeling you felt. It is such an amazing experience.