Opportunity is just around the corner

Hello

Let's just start out with Wednesday, which I am dubbing Weird Wednesday. Because it was weird. But it started out Grrrrrreat. It started out with a nice practice for a musical number for the mission tour we will be doing later this month with Elder Texeira. I am always so happy and feel so blessed when  I am given these opportunities to sing! This time I feel almost a little scared because it is just a duet with piano and violin. I'm singing with one of the assistants, Elder Bustos, who sings craaaaazy good. We are singing Rock of Ages from the face to face devotional with Elder Holland (LOOK IT UP). The practice was amazing. The song already sounds so good after just one practice. I'll try and put something on dropbox when we get going a bit farther along! So I was pumped from the practice and then later that day we got to the real deal missionary work. Where things started sliding downhill. We passed by the house of an investigator and her daughters to go and talk (and to bring up a baptismal date!!) I started to share Alma 7:11-16, which is a great scripture to talk about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and to find the needs of an investigator. Well we found out their need: A better family life. The father, son, and husband are all against them learning more about the church. The son even turned UP his music when the mom asked him to turn it down. There's a rule if the head of the household won't allow the members of the family to be baptized, they can't do it. This mother was so frustrated and crying, it was so sad. She told us in maybe a few years they will let her learn more. Let's hope so. For now we will just have to leave her with her Book of Mormon so she can keep reading it and receiving the peace she gets from doing it. After that, We went to our other investigator's house, Remember 'Juan'? Yeah him. Well we went to his house, and he wasn't there. so I called him and he answered, and he was acting WAAAAAAY weird. And he started talking about how he is part of another church and never going to change.... okaaaaay. It was so weird because we have been seeing some great progress with him and had some really great experiences. He told us to not go by his house anymore, but sorry Juan, we can't just end like that over the phone! we will try to talk with him again this week when he has had some time to calm down.
So at this point I was just thinking ''Well this is kind of weird''. Basically all we had had just gone down the drain! But as we turned the corner, a friend of the member that was accompanying us with visits started talking to the member. OPPORTUNITY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER. We talked for a moment and arranged to pass by his house Saturday. Well fast forward to Saturday, and we had a amaaaaaazing lesson with 'Mario' and his wife. We talked about the Resortation and he and his wife accepted the challenge to read the Book of Mormon and to pray about it. I asked him why, and he got real quiet and began to share some of the struggles he is having in his life right now. He shared with us how he felt like we had come at exactly the right moment. We shared Mosíah 2:41 (one of my favorite scriptures... READ IT) which talks about how those that follow God's commandments receive temporal and spiritual blessings, and then we talked about eternal families (he has two girls and one on the way) He is so prepared for the Gospel. The wife seems to be pretty set in her church, which scared us because Mario says he will only make his change with his family, but the couple accepted a baptismal date at the end of the lesson! Now it all depends in their faith to determine what their outcome will be!

So yeah that was the excitement of the week. Elder Boccazzi and I are doing really well and keeping up the work without getting too trunky!

Challenge of the Week. Read 2 Nephi 25:26. What do YOU do to talk and testify of Christ during your daily dealings?

See you all soon enough!

Elder Hardcastle=)