Protected AGAIN! The disappearing street :) (sorry this is from last week - I was out of town)

The mission is seeming more and more like precious time. With my companion, Hermana Coleman, going home this week...it's been a real learning period for me these last six weeks. And seeing the date that I will be flying home...it impacted me pretty strongly this morning. It seems a lot closer than I would want it to be, but just like I accepted to come on a mission, I must accept the next step. But I am thankful that I have a few more months here in Guatemala.

I am thankful for the protection that we have here. This week, we were headed towards a lesson in the night time. There is a connecting little calle between the main road and the street with the family we were going to go visit. Everything seemed normal as we walked along the main road towards the little street to take a shortcut...soon enough, I realized we had passed it as we were talking with people in the street. We turned around and started to walk the other way in order to find the street. We were talking again and soon realized that we went too far in the other direction. A woman seemed to be a little startled to see us in the night walking and told us that we needed to be more careful. We thanked her and returned to look for the connecting street. Another person stopped us and told us that we shouldn't be walking in that direction because of robbers and gangs in the night. I was a little confused at the reason why we could not find the street to cut across...we walked back and forth about four times on the main road but something distracted us each time we passed the small connecting road. We decided to walk along the road to look for the road again and then one more person told us to be careful...we then both felt very impressed to leave immediately and take the long way back home instead of cutting across through the connecting street. I don't know what would have happened if we cut through it...but I know that we have been protected very often these last couple weeks. 

I am also thankful for the opportunity to have divisions with the sisters. We have had 13 divisions in 5 weeks and it gets pretty busy always leaving my area but it's a huge learning experience to be able to work with all the other missionaries. I was working this week in San Lucas and we were able to have a family night with a young adult that has attended church a few times now. We challenged him to get baptized on Sunday but he had something impeding him...oftentimes we are scared to do something because we are afraid that we will fall after we attempt to do it, which was one of his fears because of his past. I learned something as we were trying to help him...God will never invite us to do something that He knows we can't complete. We had him pray in the lesson to ask if her should be baptized on Sunday...it was the most sincere prayer that I have ever heard. After the prayer, he just paused and told us of the joy he felt...but he was still a little hesitant about being baptized on Sunday. We explained that he had just recieved an answer but we invited him to pray again in the night alone and told him that we would call in the morning for a final answer. During our morning studies, the missionary that I was with called him to ask how his prayer went and to see if he would be baptized on Sunday. From the phone call I heard was, "Did you pray last night? ....And how did you feel? (and then a loooooong pause and then I heard, "So...would you prefer it on 5 on Sunday?" And she just looked up at me with the biggest smile. It's so amazing to travel to different areas and see the progress of people coming unto Christ. I love the mission!