Patience

I'll be pretty honest, these last couple weeks have been very trying. We had a baptism planned for the last week of February of a teenage girl, Abi, who lives with her aunt (her mom hadn't seen her for 7 years and communicates with her through facebook. We had to contact her to get her consent and she willing gave permission so that her daughter could be baptized.) The day of the baptism, the electricity went out in the chapel..and we were not able to fill the baptismal font. The family and the bishop preferred to wait until Saturday to have the baptism instead of finding other ways to fill the font...the day after, the teenager's mother called from the US to tell her that she no longer would give consent to having her daughter baptized. We are still trying to help her so she can make the choice when she turns 18, and we are still praying that somehow the mom's heart will be softened.

Our other investigator, Jeni, who had attended four times and was progressing is M.I.A. We heard she went to the coast and we haven't been able to teach her for a while. We had a few others that were coming to church but not with real intent...so we had to start again to look for more positive people and we found almost 100 new investigators in just a couple weeks...but nobody seemed to be progressing. And then we only had 1 person in church. Conference was coming up and we were praying to be able to find people to invite to it...

One investigator couldn't leave her house because she was locked in without keys...another investigator couldn't leave because she would miss the water when it came by...everyone seemed to have an excuse after they promised they would come. One of our investigators couldn't go because his pig was pregnant and past due date...and I actually prayed that the pig would have its baby quickly so that they could come.

On Saturday morning...nobody came to conference.

On Saturday afternoon...nobody came to conference.

On Sunday morning...nobody came to conference.

We walked a total of about 18 miles to bring our investigators (I like using the pedometer my mom sent) but everybody seemed to have excuses. But for some reason, we were calm about it.

Earlier in the week, I had an impression to go visit a woman named Hermana Paz. Her husband isn't a member...but is pretty harsh in his lack of desire to learn more. I brushed off the impression thinking it was to go see her husband with a little of hesitation at the annoyance he feels when members of the church stop by...but then it came again. We went out of our way to go visit her and we found her talking to her friend in the street. We introduced ourselves and shared a quick scripture with her and invited her to conference. On Saturday, we passed by her house to invite her again but she had left to run chores...but her son had commented that they might be able to come tomorrow. They were the last people on our list to pass by for the Sunday afternoon General Conference and when we knocked on their door, his wife, was standing their with a clean face and brushed hair and a red dress and wornout shoes on placed on her feet. She was ready for us to come pick her up. Her husband was also ready witha button up shirt and dress pants. And the little old widow we found in the street was also ready to come with us. The three came to conference with us and after greeting the bishop at the end of the session, informed him that they would be attending church with us the next week also.

On Sunday afternoon...we had 5 attending.

I learned a lot from these weeks. We were working harder than we ever had, waking up every day at 5 and talking to everyone...but we weren't seeing any immediate progress. A few weeks is pretty immediate for blessings to come, but sometimes in life we have to wait a while before we are able to see the blessings. I know that even though I was working diligently and urgently, it wasn't part of my timing at all. It's His timing and sometimes blessings come quickly, others more delayed and the best will come after this life. I am grateful for the weeks and slower progress with harder work just like I will be grateful in my life with slower years and harder work...He is always with us.