"Tender Mercies of the Lord"       April 30, 2012

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This week has truly been a "tender mercy of the Lord" in the life of Elder Hatch and I. We have felt as though we have been working very hard and diligently in our missionary efforts, but we haven't had the success that we have been so desperately working towards. We have had great weeks and difficult weeks as well. But, as I said, this week has truly been a blessing straight from our Heavenly Father.

It all starts with Monday night. We had a lesson with an investigator named Carolina. Her son and daughter-in-law were baptized back in 2010, but she is now listening to us. She started listening to the missionaries back in January, a month before I got to the area. Elder Hatch and I felt like we should go over the first lesson once again with her. We taught her one of the most powerful first lessons of my mission with a very strong Spirit. As we taught there was complete unity between our companionship and the whole lesson just flowed from point to point and I felt the Spirit testify that the things we were sharing are true. Carolina was also very interactive in the lesson, expresses her ideas and opinions. At the end of the lesson we asked her if, upon knowing these things are true, she would be willing to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and she said, "yes". It was a very strong, spiritual lesson. Afterwards we had a lesson with a less active man named Alex. My companion asked me if that would be the best use of our time, considering that we had a member with us and we could look for an investigator, but I felt that we were supposed to be with Alex. It was also a very powerful lesson we had with him, and he helped himself realize how he can help his friend Ruben truly start to accept the gospel and make the small changes in his life to come to a full realization of the truthfulness of the gospel.

Tuesday was likewise blessed. We had lots of lessons, but I wanted to to mention more specifically the lesson we had with Stuardo Polanco. They just moved out of our area on Saturday, but we had 3 great lessons with them this week. This first one on Tuesday we were able to talk a little bit about families and the temples. Stuardo had the opportunity to go to the open house of the Quetzaltenango Temple and he mentioned to us that it was absolutely beautiful and that it was without a doubt the closest someone could get to God on earth. He also said that he hopes to be able to go back there one day, and we testified to him that he can. It was wonderful.

On Wednesday we had our zone conference, combined with Elder Llewelyn's zone, so I got to spend the day with him. However, the best part in all honesty was the conference. We had a lot of great inspired words and received lots of instruction on how to help improve our areas and Elder Hatch and I received some great revelation for our own area. It was absolutely fantastic!

Thursday was another killer day! In the morning we had a lesson with a woman named Sonja that I contacted with Elder Richins on divisions 5 weeks ago, and we were finally able to teach her. It was a short lesson, but it was really good. At first I didn't think that she was really going to listen to us, but as we kept teaching her the message of the Restoration she opened up more and more and accepted a return visit from us next week! Another awesome lesson we had was with a young woman named Gabi, who is 18 and a referral from a member named Ulises. She is a really sweet girl who was very intrested in listening to us (no, not just cause I'm so good looking ;) JK. But really, it was a fantastic lesson and you can tell that she is really interested in actually knowing what our message is for her. I also conducted a baptismal interview for an 8 year old who was baptized on Saturday. Smart little kid. And we had another lesson with Stuardo, probably the best one we have ever had with him! I don't remember what all we said or how we said it or anything, but I remember that we testified of the importance of the Book of Mormon and how it has completely changed our lives, and Stuardo said "hasta hoy me convincieron que debo leer el libro" which is like "until today you finally convinced me to read the book"... But it sounded a lot cooler in Spanish. After listening to the missionaries for a while, some little thing in our testimonies convinced him of the necessity to read the Book of Mormon. It was another powerful lesson. And the coolest part, is he read the very next day! The Title Page, the Intro, and all 3 testimonies! And then on Saturday he moved out of the area, which was the hardest part.

Saturday and Sunday were also great blessings of the Lord, but not with long stories. However, I know that this work is absolutely true! Today I received an email from a woman in my old area "I helped reactivate" and whose son "I helped baptized". But it was extremely touching to hear from her and know that something I did, or said, to help bring the Spirit into their home helped to change their lives. These are the moments and days that every missionary hopes and loves to have.

Love,

Elder Andrew Anderson LaPray