Monday, July 15, 2013 - "It's Electric!"

Hola Mi Familia Thanks so much for my packages! Finally I have my camera working again and I have the most comfortable shoes in the world that I really like that are really going to last me 7 more months! My comp says thanks for the cookies as well! (They are his favorite!) Dad was mentioning all the rain and wetness going on and let me just say...I feel ya! We can basically expect a thunderstorm every evening/night. And even if it doesn't rain, it will at least thunder and lightning. There has been soo much lightning! The Electric storms are fantastic here in the desert! But unfortunately quite dangerous. One person--a mother--has even died this past week from being struck by lightning. Quite sad. And on 2 days this week it even began hailing with the rain. So it is quite commonplace that we get soaked from head to toe almost every single night. It is horribly yucky and humid in the day from the rain the day before, but once again it always cools down at night quite nicely with the refreshing storms! Someone said it is supposed to be like this every single day this month. That's okay! I'm not complaining too much...at least we won't have to suffocate in the horrible heat like Hermosillo.... Well this week has gone as fast as the lightning is striking! It is so crazy to think that we are in the middle of July already and it feels like we just barely began. The lady we are teaching and her kids are confusing me! We can't seem to figure out what they need or what they want. They are just an enigma. Sometimes they seem quite interested and seem like everything makes sense and they want to continue, and then other times they put up a wall and don't complete sometimes and they say we are going fast and they want more time to think of things and to do things. This kind of bothers me sometimes because for the Lord there is no time. It is now or it is now! He is really hastening His work and people need to stop being so wishy-washy sometimes! But we did have some special moments with them this week. Talking with them about how they liked and what they felt when they attended the baptism of our last brother, one of the youth said that when the closing prayer was said in the baptism, he could feel a presence, "an energy" he called it. This was special because he was feeling the Spirit testifying. We had a really killer lesson about "The Gospel of Jesus Christ" and talked about the faith, repentance, and baptism. They were like understanding everything really well and you could just see the lights going on it their heads and everything was clicking--it was all making sense. And then we get to the end of the lesson where we give the baptismal invitation and we ask them "Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone who holds the authority of God?". Their answer....no.....They flat out said no. They said that in their "doctrine" or theology that they have grown up with they don't believe in baptism and that they all talked and they weren't going to get baptized. This was hard because we could see that they were understanding completely, but just flat out said no. Maybe we scared them? Well, the next day we went and just did a quick visit, but we read with them the Book of Mormon invitation in Moroni about reading and asking. It was quite special and the spirit was there. We asked them to read and ask. This is where we left off. Let's just hope this week they actually did the task and have more desires to continue with us. We found a new investigator this week by just going and visiting a member. We visited this member and there was a neighbor visiting and we began sharing a spiritual thought and then we began talking to this neighbor. This lady had talked to the missionaries before and she wanted proof from the Bible of the Book Of Mormon. These missionaries couldn't show her and so she completely rejected the Book Of Mormon. As we talked again, we taught more about the Restoration and showed her the verse in Ezekiel about The Book Of Mormon. She began to think about it and once again, I could see the lights go on. The next day we went back to visit her in her home and we shared The Restoration. She didn't complete accept it all at once, but we invited her to read and pray and she said she would. Just now we wait until the next visit... This week has been a little rough. They worst part about the mission is coming to love people and care for them and their salvation and then to see them not want to complete. Not want to make sacrifices for their Heavenly Father to follow him. It just really kills me and hurts me. Even members. I just don't like coming to love and care for people so much and then to be deeply saddened when they don't want to follow God. It is especially worse for me because when I get to know someone or something or a place or whatever and I come to love them, I develop an attachment and it is just so rough. I can only imagine how our Heavenly Father feels to watch us down here and to see all of His wayward lost children who don't want to follow Him. I'm sure it hurts him more. But we just "keep on keepin on" like my 10th grade science teacher would say we just keep showing them the love and support they need and maybe one day they will realize and want to be better. I love and miss you all tons! Hope you are well! ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner