Lemme at em'

Well,

This week was a week filled with... Storms!

That’s right, storms, and we are talking about the heavens opened up and dumped. I have been soaked more than once this week. Yesterday I organized a family home evening and when I finally arrived I was so soaked that, Hermano Pedraza gave me one look and went to get me a towel, ahahaha

Dripping wet.

I love it, the weather here is amazing. Blue gray clouds always and the thunder and lightning!!! So epic. The thunder is constant and the lighting always, the rain sometimes. I love the weather here.

So some of the things that happened to me this week:

No baptisms, again, but we are looking good for the 24th of August if all things go well, I’ll explain a little later. Sunday we had our best day ever, 21 investigators. We are experiencing serious growth in the Americas branch. We are reactivating less active members, which is my favorite. It kind of bugs my companion that I’m not baptism hungry. He is almost finished with his mission and has a lot of experience behind him, he is very accustomed to baptisms, and all I want to do is work with the people that already know the gospel and just need a little push. Of course I love working with my investigators and I am helping them towards baptism. During our planning session, I like to put 3 less active or inactive members and Elder Borg would rather put 1 or none. This Sunday we had around 10 less active members show up at church!!! So I was pumped. The most important to me is Eddy Hincapìe.

Eddy Hincapìe, is the father figure of a family that is very close to me. Maribel is the mom, Angie the daughter and Veronica their other daughter. They were the first family I met here. They are amazing and incredible members of the church. The father just never was interested in going back to church. It was really hard for the family, because all Maribel wanted was for her husband to sit in church with her and listen to their daughters bare their testimonies. Eddy is awesome, he knows the gospel, he just doesn’t go to church. Their daughter, Angie will be going on a mission, and got her call while we were here. She is going to Santa Cruz, Bolivia and she will come home on the exact same day as me. 

I’ve been working very hard with Eddy. We used the president of the quorum of elders to finally get him to come back this Sunday. How? Hermano Pedraza went and told him he would like him to teach the lesson this Sunday in priesthood and left. It worked. It was such an incredible moment for the whole family. 

We have been doing splits a lot. We have a lot of work to do and only one pair of us, so we split up with the members of the church. In splits we are so effective. Seriously it is awesome. The other day I went to go see Evelyn in splits with Hermano Certuche, and I invited the whole family to come listen. The whole family will now be hearing our lessons with Evelyn. I really hope that the family will be receptive of what we teach, it would mean so much if Evelyn had the support of her family.

Our investigators are progressing well but none are progressing better than the family Muñoz.

Richard and his wife are epic. Richard goes to a church where they shout and clap and all that, so it’s always exciting to have lessons with him. Our first lesson we introduced the Book of Mormon. The second lesson, he told us that he has never read more truth in his life and not only did he read the section we had left him but he and his wife are almost done reading the whole darn thing. Oh my gosh so incredible. We then invited him to church and he said, OF COURSE. We asked his sister-in-law if she would like to come to, she asked where and Richard essentially told us of course she would come and started lecturing to his in-law how the Book of Mormon was true and that the Bible and the Book of Mormon together will lead their family to salvation... Elder Borg and I were blown away by his conviction. 

The family Florez are coming along, but slowly, they normally can’t attend church because they are still building their house and Sunday is the only day the dad has off. They are all doing well though. 

Today I was very surprised at the amount of love I received from EVERYONE. I loved it. I printed out 7 pages of size 10 font of everyone’s letters it really meant a lot to me. Thank you all for the support.

All right now to the fun stuff:

Lemme at em’

Elder Borg and I have felt like we needed to save some money and didn’t know why. 

Well, one word

Paro or...

Strike 

Don’t worry everything here is all good. What happens is that all the roads in and out of the city are closed in a lot of cities here in Cauca. 

The problem is that things get very, very expensive. But we are prepared.

Today was cambios, transfers and Elder Borg and I were informed that we would be staying together here! That means one thing to Elder Borg: 
He will die here in Popayan. 
That is what it is called when a missionary finishes his mission, they die. So he is getting pretty excited, understandably. 

This week I think the most important thing for all of us to remember is to:

 Obey

Who would have thought that I would be the person that would start to have a heart attack when 9:30 comes around and we still are not in our house, well I am. It kills my companion sometimes, but I know we are receiving blessings for our compliance. 

Remember this,

If we comply to the laws set down by our Father in Heaven, how much easier it is for him to give us blessings. 

If a child is constantly disobedient and does whatever he wants, and then asks for a new phone, or help in buying something, how much do you want to comply with their wishes. If they are obedient and are constantly trying their hardest to do their best, think it would be easier to give them their gifts?

Remember this:

This week is a week of obedience, and thusly will be a week of, 

BLESSINGS

Lots of Love

Elder Lyle