Rebuilding

Hello Everyone!

I hope all is well! Another great week in the mission.

We have been doing lots of work here to rebuild the area and trying to find new investigators.  We were teaching a 9 year old kid named Luis that was progressing towards baptism but he moved back to Mexico  so he's gone.  This week we started teaching two great families: one in Camino that went to a Christian church in Mexico but go to a 7th day adventist church because that's the first one they found here, and a family that is related to our one family of members.  We are excited to teach them more and get some other ideas in place!

We are trying to get an English class started here and a soccer night to be able to find more Hispanic people.
There's not too much else going on up here.  A lot of the Hispanic people up here already know the missionaries or are very "hard-hearted" and "stiff-necked" and don't want to hear us.  They run away from us and hide and are afraid to make commitments with God, that's what our member says at least.  Yesterday we had a conversation that is very typical.  The kids answered the door and talked to us for a while in English, then we hear voices from the back saying in Spanish, "tell them to go away and that we're not interested".  Eventually we get to talking to the parents and they tell us they don't like our religion or that "they're catholic and that's that".  When we ask them what they don't like they never have anything to say and just say "we all worship the same God and that's really all that matters.  My parents raised me Catholic so that's how I'm going to stay".  We then usually bring up points such as "well if it doesn't matter which church you go to as long as you worship God, why are you so against listening to our message?" or "so what you're saying is if you happened to be born Protestant you would die Protestant just because that's the religion your were born in".  Usually by then they have nothing more to say so they just turn us away and don't listen to us any more.  It's really sad to see how little people are committed to God and how far off they are but we keep searching for the people that God is preparing to accept the truth.

One cool experience we had this week happened with two different people.  One night we were talking to an older guy and we got to talking about ourselves and he was asking why we take time out of our lives to serve the Lord.  He thought it would be better that we study and go to school and then get into a really good career.  We kept telling him that we were called by a prophet of God to be there and knew that that's where we needed to be at the time and that there would be time as soon as we go home to finish studying and get started in our careers.  A few days later when we met the 7th day adventists, when we were leaving we asked if there was anything we could do to help them out.  She said no because anything else we could do for her wouldn't be nearly as important as what we were doing then.  She related it to the story of Martha and Mary, where one was doing honorable things in cleaning/chores but the other sitting at the feet of Jesus was doing something more important.  That really made me think and be grateful for the time I have to serve the Lord.  I know there's nothing better that I could be doing in my life right now and am very grateful for the experiences I've had and everything I've learned.

I hope the week goes well at home and I'll try to have more to say for the next week!

Les Quiero Mucho,
Elder Gaskill