This week was great! I had my first zone meeting and I understood most of it, so that's some progress. My companion is a zone leader, so he and his ZL comp told us about the goal they have as a zone. On December 3rd, we're having what's called a noche blanca, which is where we are trying to have a bunch of baptisms on the same day. There are 7 companionships in our zone, and the goal is 20, so that's about 3 baptisms per companionship. I'm really excited to work after that goal!
So, as part of that goal, we decided to make some daily and weekly goals as a companionship. We decided that each day, the contacting goals that we made, we would complete no matter what, and that we wouldn't come back home at night until we had contacted and met our meta. So it's been tough, but as a result, we've had SO many new investigators and we've already begun to see the fruits of our labors.
Real quick Spanish update for you. I've realized that the hard part of language learning is that sometimes you're learning a lot even if it feels like you've plateaued. Day to day, it doesn't always feel like I've improved a lot, but if I look back, I am amazed by how much I've learned and I am able to do! I think our characters are really similar to that. God isn't going to take someone, and transform them into their full potential immediately. It has to be step by step. I write a quote in my planner every day, and last week I had one that said: ''Our only concern should be to do better than we did yesterday. Step by step is the law of growth. God does not expect an acorn to be a mighty oak before it has been a sapling'' -George E. Carpenter
I do feel like I've improved a lot. I can teach lessons pretty fluently with my companion (although I'm sure it's riddled with grammatical errors) and yesterday, I gave a talk in sacrament meeting! (my strategy was to use lots of scriptures, because those are very well worded) and I actually got a lot of compliments afterwards, so I don't know if I had the gift of tongues, or if everyone just felt bad for the gringo! Haha!
My spiritual moment is this: We were teaching the parents of a kid named Joan, who's a recent convert. They're always very kind when we teach their son, and so we decided to teach them too sometime. So last night, we were teaching them about the restoration, and we got to the part where we invite them to pray about the message and ask if it's true. So we were talking about how they could receive an answer and the mom said ''Oh, I already know that it's true! I had a dream a while back, and I was told that you're church is true'' So me and Elder Garcia looked at each other, and we were like: Whaaaaaat! It was at this point, where my focus kind of drifted off, and when it comes to understanding people, I've got to kind of be in the zone, right? So the shock of this news kind of got me out of the zone, and these people started talking, and about 5 minutes later, I was lost as far as what they were talking about. All of the sudden, I got an impression, and it was like: ''Commit them to baptism'' and I was like: ''Ummmm, that's not the best idea, cause I have absolutely no idea what's being talked about right now'' and I kind of shrugged it off as just one of my own personal thoughts. Then, I thought of a talk that I heard from Elder Bednar in the CCM about how to know when it's a spiritual impression, and the conclusion I came to was that it would be better to do it even if it's not the spirit, than to not do it if it is. So right in that moment, I asked them to be baptized, and I felt really strongly afterwards, and I testified as a representative of Jesus Christ that it was the right thing to do. They looked and me, and thought for a second, and they agreed. So it worked! Afterwards, I asked my comp what was happening while I was lost, and he said that they were talking about stuff that bothered them, like polygamy, and that my comp was about to have a sort of bible bash with them, that he would have regretted, when out of the blue, I came out and challenged them to baptism. Kind of a cool experience.
Guys, I know that the church is true, and I know it more and more every day. This work is amazing, and I'm so happy to be a part of it. I love you all so much, and I'm so glad we are an eternal family.
-Elder Anderson
P.S. I went to a Haitian market the other day, and I got a flippin' machete!!!
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