Elder Bobby Crofts

April 20, 2015

Well this week went fast. This week was a super good one. We have found a few new people to teach and we are working hard to help them progress. People aren´t really committed and it is tough to work with them sometimes. Saturday night, we had 3 investigators with baptismal dates and I felt 70- 80% certain that every one of them was going to come to church. Sunday in the morning, we got a text from one saying that he couldn’t come, Cristian didn’t come because his parents and brother decided to go camping during the day, and Sebastian came. So now we only have one but it was a true miracle.

Sebastian has been coming to church and as of last week still did not have permission from his mom to be baptized. This week, we stopped by their house with our mission leader and she said that they were "busy" and that we couldn’t come in to their house. I was not about to let this opportunity go because this was only the 2nd time that we had found her at the house so I asked her straight up why she wouldn’t let Sebastian be baptized. She started to talk about "commitment" and a bunch of other stuff. I was a little bugged but tried to keep my cool. I bore my testimony of President Monson and that he has said that 3 weeks is enough to be baptized and that he would know better than anyone else how much time is needed. We told her how lucky she is to have a son who simply wants to follow Christ. There are so many teens here lost in drugs. I know that she felt the spirit. She said that she was going to have to discuss it with his dad. We stopped by two days later and Sebastian told us that she gave him permission!!!! That same night, she came up to him and told him that he could be baptized! But the best of all.... She told him that she was going to start to come to church again!!!!! Oh I was so happy!

Last week, we had a zone activity and it was a really good time. We played some football(not futbol) for a little bit and oh can I just say how good that felt. The gardens were pretty but we spent most of the time messing around in the camping ground. It was nice to have a little break. The theme of the activity was setting spiritual, physical, and intellectual goals. Elder Allred, the other DL of our zone and I, had to make an activity for the intellectual. We made a riddle and it was super good and nobody could figure it out. It was a blast. We had some choripans (sausage in some bread.... basically a hot dog) and Elder Rios from Santiago was cooking them when we hear "¡agua!......¡Agua! ¡¡¡¡AGUA!!!!!" A big old fire had started on the grill and none of us had realized. haha we went and threw a bucket of water on top of it all to put it out. haha but in the end they were still tasty so no problem.

So this week we were teaching a Catholic and they started to talk about the importance of the Virgin Mary. Elder Brown gave an example that you all might just want to write down. He compared Jesus to a peanut and Mary to the peanut shell. He said "Let´s not waste time talking about the shell when we all know that it is the peanut that we want.....Yeah the shell brought life to the peanut, but the peanut is the thing that we want to focus on." Haha, how wise.

This week, I realized how important it is to really follow the spirit. People can choose to accept our message or not. So it is a little difficult to measure success with numbers. But we can feel like we are successful if we feel like we are following the spirit and delivering the message of the restoration to people in a way that touches their hearts. True success and growth is found in the change, growth and dedication of the missionary. I love this work and I am loving being a missionary.

Love,

Elder Crofts