How to build the "boat"

¡Hola! ¿Qué tal?

Besides the fact that we were fed cow tongue for lunch this past week...it was a good one! (And the cow tongue really was not that bad...just the fact that I could see the taste buds? Not okay. :s)

Cow tongue

Instead of district meeting this past week, we had interviews with Presidente Detlefsen. The meeting before the interviews went really long so the interviews ended up being quick. Yet it was great to see our Mission President! He taught us a lot, but focused mostly on 1 Nephi chapter 17 where the Lord commands Nephi to build a boat. The catch was that Nephi was told to build it "after a manner which He (the Lord) would show unto him," not after the manner of man. For this, Nephi had to go to the Lord in prayer many times to be able to find out where to go to find the tools and how to do each step. Presidente related it to us as missionaries that we are trying to build the Lord's boat too! His church! We have to rely on Him to tell us where to go to find the "tools" (investigators) and then we have to rely on Him to learn how to use them or teach them so that we can build this boat. It was such a great analogy, I loved it! All of us are building our own kind of "boat," and if we rely on Him for the help, we'll be able to successfully build it after the manner of God.

We did divisions this week too between the hermanas here in Pigüé. I went on divisions with Hermana Arancibia, and we had a really successful day! It was fun again to see different work ethics, different contacting approaches, and to see her great eagerness to share the gospel with everyone! She's a great missionary. Since I'm used to being the junior companion, she had me be the senior companion for the day and choose where we would go. At one point I decided to go by a house that caught my eye a few days previous. When we walked up there was a man out standing by his fence. We introduced ourselves and chatted for a minute. We then asked him (Ernesto) why he was outside, like if he was waiting for someone or something? He replied and said, "No, I just felt like I needed to go outside for something!" It was such a powerful moment, it was so cool! I know it was the Holy Ghost that was preparing him to listen to our message. We were able to teach him the first lesson, and he committed to baptism! Whoo!

We're still struggling to get investigators to go to church, but we are finding a lot more new investigators lately! Things are improving paso a paso. :) Hope you all are doing well!

-Hermana Vawdrey