Me Arrepenti

Dear Family,

This has been a really good week, a week of change. First off, I have to say that Jonathan looks a lot older in the photos without braces. I can´t believe the growth he has had and won´t believe the growth that he´ll have in the coming months and year. I won´t recognize him. Is his voice changing too?

I started off this past week fairly depressed and hard on myself. But, on Thursday night, something my companion said got stuck in my mind. “God didn´t send us here to fail.” We were failing because I had chosen to fail. And I knew that all along. But I learned many things about who I am during those moments. I decided that I would do at least my ten contacts the next day, something I hadn´t done for a while.

The next day, my companion and I, together, decided to do something that our president had given us a while back called “Purificándonos” ( Purifying ourselves). It consists of a fast and at the end of the fast you write down habits you need to give up and things that prevent you from having the Spirit. Then you commit yourself that for 40 days you´ll avoid those things. And we decided that we would focus on doing our contacts throughout the day.

And we did them! For the first time in a while. One of my problems is that I want to perfect and I want to be perfect now. I´m not patient with myself and I can´t expect perfection because that is a difficult and long process. On the mission we have a ton of responsibilities and one of the things I have long known about myself is that I cannot multitask. I can´t think about more than one thing at a time. So, when there are lots of things calling my attention at the same time, I get overwhelmed. So, to in the style that conforms most to myself, I decided to put a focus for the day and focus on that one thing while we went about doing the other things throughout the day. And it helped a lot. We acheived our goal and we did well in all of the other things that we were doing.

Friday was a day of Kairos and a day full of other miracles. The biggest of them all (apart from our own repentence) was that Lily, a recent convert had some big news. She had a hard life and made a ton of bad choices in her life. One of the consequences was that she recieved HIV. But, Friday morning, when she went to the doctor to retrieve some studies, everything came out “negative.” Not a trace was found. She finds it as a direct result of being “born again” and cleansing of baptism. Also, this same day, the police came to her house with the papers showing that the man who raped her could not enter withing ten blocks of her. She was estatic when we found her, especially because it meant that she could leave her house again to go visit her children.

Another good result is that Elder Jimenez and I are a lot more unified. The other times when we tried to improve, the other wouldn´t help really. When he tried to change I´d bring him down and when I tried to change, I felt alone. But this time we made the decision to change together and everything became easier. I didn´t have to tell him everytime to do a contact with someone who is coming and he didn´t have to wait all day for me to do one. Our relation reminds me a lot about the relation with my second companion, but I´m glad that we could get over our differences together and learn to love the other better. We now experience a lot more of the Spirit and therefore we are much happier.

We are being blessed immediately for our diligence. A contact we did Friday led us to teach Veronica on Saturday, who came to church with us yesterday. The only problem is that she´ll be in the capital all week and won´t come back until next Sunday morning and doesn´t have a cell phone, so we won´t have contact. Also, she has been living with a man unmarried for the past 6 months. They are still without child, so we´ll se what happens now.

José also came on his own and early to church. We are seeing that his interest is changing into belief. He will make a great member of the church once he feels the need to be baptized, which we´ll help him out in this coming week.

And we had another interesting experience. Here in San Justo, there is a crazy member. He talks about hordes of demons and how we have to gather all of the elders together to fight them and that Beethoven descended to teach him guitar. But, his wife is a member of the Red Cross and completely sane and is not a member, but has a lot of interest. She came two weeks in a row and I didn´t know she wasn´t a member. We taught her yesterday and she has a lot of potential. I don´t have time to explain everything, but I will next week.

I know this is the work of God and that Christ is our Savior. He is always giving us a second chance and will help us when we seek Him.

Love,
Elder Drake Ranquist