Another week in Sabinas

This will probably be a shorter letter because I wrote a lot more personal emails this week, but we had a good week!

First off... CONGRATULATIONS TO MY VERY BEST FRIEND WHO GOT MARRIED THIS PAST FRIDAY!!!! I LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUU, CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Pedro was baptized and I was able to go!! I will see if I can include a picture, but maybe not until next week. He is so sweet and it was a neat experience. My first baptism!!! 

We dropped Estela... it was really sad. But actually, we feel alright about it. We taught her last Tuesday and just decided she isn´t going to progress. We taught The Restoration again and even watched The Restoration video, but she just isn´t making the connection with The Book of Mormon meaning the church is true and the only true church of God. She still loves the Book of Mormon and wow, she really loves us, but we decided its just going to be a personal journey for her and in the time and will of God. Eventually she will figure it out and I imagine it will be as she continues to read, but all is well. We imagine the next time she comes in contact with missionaries, it will click. 

Javier has been out of town all this week, but we hope to teach him this week.

There is a couple named Carlos and Yesica that are preparing for both marriage and  baptism. Carlos is a member, but has been inactive I believe. They started coming to church together and Yesica wants to be baptized, but first they have to get married. We can only teach them on Sundays when they come to church because they live in Barotorran, a town nearby that we are forbidden to go to. I am not exactly sure what has gone down there, but its been forbidden by the First Presidency, so tells me my companion, and they don´t even have a branch there. The chapel and branch was shut down there a few years ago and all the members attend here in Sabinas. Anyways, so teach them in church during sunday school and they´re a pretty sweet couple.

Mere y Enrique are continuing with the divorce and we can´t see them as often because we have to start focusing on finding more people to teach.

Other than that, our other potential investigators have kind of fallen through and we didn´t have too much success this week in finding new people to teach. That will be a focus this week.

A really cool thing that did happen this week though was that some plans had fallen through and we had just dropped Estela so we were kind of discouraged and we still had like an hour or so left in the day. Hermana Barnard wanted to just go home and start fresh in the morning, but I convinced her to keep going. She wasn´t very enthusiastic (I am not condeming her, it was a rough day), but we were riding our bikes and I suddenly decided to go back and contact someone. We rode right up to her and without your normal introduction to make the conversation natural, I was just like ¨¨Hi, we´re missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There is a women´s conference going on this weekend and we were wondering if you and your daughter would like to attend¨. Thats pretty blunt cause we didn´t even really introduce ourselves, but I just started talking haha and she was like ¨Yeah, that would be great. What is it?¨and was asking us questions and stuff. She was like I was wondering who ya´ll were and what you were doing here¨. And then after we visited a less active member who Hermana Barnard has tried to contact many times before with no answer, and she was home. Long story short, they were really willing to come back to church, just uncomfortable becuase they don´t remember the doctrine and don´t know many people in the church. We returned later in the week and found out they hadn´t eaten since SATURDAY (it was wednesday) and they are in dire need of temporal help. This is a woman and her 11 year old daughter (the daughter takes on A LOT of responsibility). We made some calls and the branch is now helping them. I felt super grateful that I decided to push through. I think its in those moments when we personally want to be done but push trough are what shows the Lord we truly are wiling to be instruments in His hands. 

I was able to watch the Women´s Broadcast (in spanish) this past Saturday, which was cool, even though I am not quite up to that speed yet hahah, but I am looking forward to this weekend for conference!! (We have our own room in the church where we will listen in English :) ). 

Pray that we kind find some new progressing investigators this week and if its in the will of the Lord that we can see some miracles too. We could use a good lift right now :). 

An invitation we have been giving to the members this past week or two is to come up with a question you would like answered in conference this weekend (yeah yeah typical missionary invitation), but to study it out yourself this week in the scriptures. By studying it out with the word of the prophets, you will prepare your heart to recieve the answer, which very well will be the same answer you find yourself in the scriptures. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever and He has given us prophets for a reason. Don´t forget that we have the words of His prophets in our very homes every day. We don´t have to wait for General Conference to hear the prophet. :)

Mom, you were asking about the members the other week. I´ll have to tell you more specifically later, but they are pretty great! One lady brought Hermana Barnard and I a full package of home-made flour tortillas on Sunday... who knows why.. but yeah, we´re pretty excited. Andddd its not helping our health goal. hahah. 

Funny scripture Hermana Barnard shared with me this week: Alma 22:28- "la parte más perezosa de los lamanitas vivía en el desierto"... hahahah.... Coahulia (my mission). May or may not be true ;) but funny none the less.

Love you all!!! 

Con MUCHO amor,

Hermana Roberts