experiences. So to start out, we have been focusing more on just how important Church is this ewek here in Santiago, and boy oh boy you have no idea how fragile this church is down here. We stoppped visiting with the actives this week so that the menos activos would show up to church, and bang this Sunday not a single active member showed up except for the branch president. Well, just goes to show why you need to have chispas in your work, because there is so much to do here!
That being said, abunch ofmenos activos came and they all have nonmember family, so we are hoping to bring them back and hopefully get some referencias that will help us in the work, but the importance of a stable branch cannot be overstated. So this week we had an investigator who is a perpetual alcoholic who hasn´t progressed for years, and I wanted to kill him (what we call it when we stop visiting someone), and we actually did, but as we were walking down the Street one day he ran up to us, bottle in hand (I saw the bottle and it said 30 percent alcohol content, and I thought the fact he could run to us was really rather impressive), and said that he really wanted to come
to church tomorrow and would see us there. He turned out to be one of only two investigators that went to church, so we have decided to really try and work with him to help him break drinking, but I cannot overstate how hard of a time he has with it.
Okay so really interesting event number one, on thursday we have planamiento semenal which means comp inventory. And we started talking, and my comp looked me in the eye, and said you know what my problema is with you, you really just do not care about these people. I admited that was probably true, and he said look Elder, your Dad is not a member right, well how would you feel if you were trying to teach him instead of one of the investigators, because maybe these people do not mean that much to you, but someone feels about each of
them (and I might add our Father in Heaven feels quite more strongly so) how you feel about your dad. I realized right there that if I want to be a missionary for anyone, I have a duty to remember to be the missionary that I would want teaching my Dad. It was just a pretty cool experience for me.
Cool Experience 2: So yesterday, the Zone Leaders made us go to some leadership training thing because my comp is a district leader. So while he and the other district leader in the zone talked with the zone leaders, I went off with another missionary to one of the Zone Leader´s recent converts. He said that Satan had been really working hard with that family since their baptism so he really wanted Elder Hirschi and I to work with them. So we are walking along and I´m like
I could probably navigate to that house, but you know if I take a taxi I could get some contacting in afterwards, so we took a taxi over. We knocked on the door (which here means yelled buenas noches) and talked with this 17 year old boy and told him our Zone Leader sent us and asked if we could help him with anything. He said yes, and brought us back to a bedroom with his girlfriend/mother of his child (just pareja here) she had just tried to commit suicide with a knife and we walked
in just in time to stop her from doing so witha pair of scissors. At this point you need to understand that Elder Hirschi while he can understand Spanish it takes him a long time to say anything. So I sat there with this woman trying to show her why what she was doing would make her so very unhappy and talk her down from what she was doing. I got her to sit up and agree to meet with the Branch President, and then I called the Zone Leaders and they came running to the house asfast as they could with the Branch President. For the first time in my life as I talked with her, I got a chance ot see what it would be like to be a Bishop, and I must say that would be a very
very hard job. Needless to say, I find it really funny that I just
happened to get sent to that recent convert family, atthat time, just happened to take a taxi to get there, and just happened to know what to ask the boy so he would take us back to the back room. Between these and various other eperiences I´ve been having here, I have been really thinking about the role of following what we feel is right. I find that whenever Itend to sin or make a mistake, I know that I should not be doing whatever it is that I am doing, and that I should do something else. I can feel it inside me, telling me it´s wrong. I really feel that a lot of times that the Spiritis telling me things, talking to me, but the only question is, am I willing to take the will of the Lord over my own will, regardless of what I see the consequences as being through my own logic. Just something to think about, I love you all lots.
Elder Standridge
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