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| Elder Lund with his Zone |
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| Breakfast as a Zone |
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| Elder Lund with Elder M |
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| Elder Lund with Elder M |
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| P-day Help |
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| Ward Building |
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| Carne Asada for P-day lunch today! |
¡Buenas!
Well, pretty good week but a few ups and downs. We challenged 13 people to baptism with dates of the 23 and 30 of August. I would like to see some baptisms before I leave Ocotillo (probably this change the 3rd of September) so we are working very hard. Unfortunately, only 2 of the 15 total investigators with fechas came to church on Sunday.
There is still hope, but the investigators will have to attend church
the next 3 weeks in a row in order to be baptized on the 30th. In other
words, this week is incredibly important to help people keep their
commitments especially attending church. It was a little tough because
we had one family who promised to come but didn´t show up. We had an
appointment the day before but the neighbors said they were in A
and on Sunday afternoon we went again and they weren´t there. Hopefully, they were still in A and not just avoiding us. We will see...
Fast sunday was tough yesterday. We went from lunch Saturday to lunch Sunday. We did a lot of walking in the sun Saturday
afternoon and I was super thirsty the entire night. Although it was
tough, it was a good fast. The sacrament was very reverent and despite
the troubles both us and our investigators are facing, I felt at peace.
M, a menos activa that we are reactivating, bore her
testimony. She was attending an evangelical church for some time but
didn´t feel right. She prayed and asked God to send her an answer the
correct path in her life. Either that day or a few days later Elder
M and I contacted the house and we started teaching her and her
family again. It has been a struggle getting her back, but she testified
yesterday with a sincere heart that she knew the church was true. She
has a lot of animo right now. There are two potential baptisms in the
house - her mom and her granddaughter who don´t have fechas yet - but
I´m truly happy for her and to see how far she has come. She, and
especially her daughter, has tried my patience a lot, but it´s been
worth it.
We had a really good Zone Conference this week.
Don´t have time to talk about it, but it was excellent. I love Zone
Conferences. It renews my animo to work hard.
I said earlier about the fallen appointment for the F. on Saturday.
Before that, we had another appointment fall through because the people
weren´t home. Again, hopefully they just forgot and not avoiding us.
Anyways, we sat down waiting for 15 minutes or so to see if they would
come. To be honest, I was feeling a little down. I started to murmur and
complain to myself. The scripture story of Nephi breaking his bow came
to mind. I pulled out my scriptures and started reading. When things
went downhill because they couldn´t obtain food, his family...even
Lehi...started complaining. But what did Nephi do? He acted. Instead of
complaining, he built another bow and then asked his father where he
should go. Complaining got his family no where, but action (an
expression of his faith) led to him receiving food once again for his
family. At this time, a story about Thomas Edison from Elder Holland´s
BYU speech came to mind as well:
Thomas
Edison devoted ten years and all of his money to developing the
nickel-alkaline storage battery at a time when he was almost penniless.
Through that period of time, his record and film production was
supporting the storage battery effort. Then one night the terrifying cry
of fire echoed through the film plant. Spontaneous combustion had
ignited some chemicals. Within moments all of the packing compounds,
celluloid for records, film, and other flammable goods had gone up with a
roar. Fire companies from eight towns arrived, but the fire and heat
were so intense and the water pressure so low that the fire hoses had no
effect. Edison was sixty-seven years old—no age to begin anew. His son
Charles was frantic, wondering if he were safe, if his spirits were
broken, and how he would handle a crisis such as this at his age.
Charles saw his father running toward him. He spoke first.
He
said, “Where’s your mother? Go get her. Tell her to get her friends.
They’ll never see another fire like this as long as they live!”
At 5:30
the next morning, with the fire barely under control, he called his
employees together and announced, “We’re rebuilding.” One man was told
to lease all the machine shops in the area, another to obtain a wrecking
crane from the Erie Railroad Company. Then, almost as an afterthought,
he added, “Oh, by the way. Anybody know where we can get some money?”
(Paraphrased from Charles Edison, “My Most Unforgettable Character,” Reader’s Digest, December 1961, pp. 175–77.)
Virtually everything you now recognize as a Thomas Edison contribution to your life came after that disaster. Remember, “Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement— discouragement has a germ of its own.”
At
that moment, I got up and told myself "We´re rebuilding" ... we were
basically out in the middle of nowhere (they live in the middle of a
corn field) an we had heard there were more houses up the road. We went
up and found 7 houses on about an acre of land. All who lived there were
family and we taught a lesson to a friend of the F.
and her sister. I´m not saying everyone who lives there will get
baptized, but it´s a start. Trouble has no connection with
discouragement. We can be like the family and complain, or we can be
like Nephi and Thomas Edison and fix the problem or at least be patient
in our afflictions.
Well, that´s all I have for this week. Cheque...
-Elder Lund
Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 7/28/14 - 8/4/14
