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Monday, June 18, 2012

June 18, 2012--Week 16


Esta semana ha sido muy buena.  Aunque no enseñamos muchos lecciónes, tenemos investigadores que realmente están progresando.  Tuvimos este jueves una actividad misional, en que vimos "José Smith: El Profeta de la Restauración".  Vinieron muchos investigadores y menos activos, y por eso también tuvimos más asistencia por miembros y investigadores en la iglesia ayer que hemos tenide desde llegué.  Dos de los hermanos que llegaron a la iglesia ayer asistieron por la primera vez, y están tomando pasos hacia el bautismo.
Por la falta que tuvimos de lecciones, también tuvimos más contactos que hemos tenido desde llegué esta semana, y tenemos muchas citas esta semana para regresar a esas personas.  También, despues de algunas horas de contactar sin poder hablar con nadie, nuestro final contacto antes de la comida encontramos un hombre que es bien bueno.  Se llama Fernando, tiene 50 años, su mamá y hermano son miembros, y se ha invitado a la iglesia muchas veces, sólo no ha asistido por algunas cositas en su vida.  Leemos con el Alma 34, y explicamos que ahora es el tiempo que nesecita hacer esos cambios en su vida y acercarse a Dios.  Fue muy especial para mí a ver como Dios nos da oportunidades así cuando trabajamos con diligencia.
  
¡¡Buenas días!!

Couple quick things:

1.  I´m not sure if it´s going to work out yet, but I´m working on seeing if I can send a package home.  If I know it won´t get there or if it´s something ridiculously expensive like 500 pesos to send I won´t be sending it.  Anyway, I would like to know the favorite combination of colors of each of my siblings (like 2 colors:  more or less a one for background and one for letters). 
2.  I was thinking if anybody has questions they want to ask me if you guys could make a separate email for questions each week that would help me.  I think I usually do a pretty good job of answering moms, but by the time I start to type the email, I forget any that anyone else may have questions. 
3.  Thank you very much for sending a new charger!  We get mail every change (at zone conference or interviews), so each 6 weeks.  For the rest of this change Elder Howell just sends pictures the same way I did.  The baptism picture I sent was actually from his camera, so that will be a solution until the new charger either gets here or until he switches. 
4.  The questions I found in your email:  I don´t have clippers, although I´m thinking about buying some, but the bishop does, and we just use his when we need to.  And yes, the Gift of Tongues is very real.  It´s still kind of funny to look at the difference of how well I understand someone when we´re contacting or teaching a lesson as compared to when I´m buying something at the store. 
5.  I just realized when I mentioned the Bishop in the last point that I haven’t talked about him really all that much.  Obispo Tadeo is really, really awesome.  He’s really young.  His oldest daughter I think is 10 or 11.  He´s always incredibly busy because he´s an awesome bishop, but he always takes the time to talk with us and offer whatever help he can.  An awesome example is how he took the time to help us put together the missionary activity that we had this week and made sure we had a projector/computer/popcorn and just everything to make it awesome. 

This week has been pretty crazy.  Probably the best one that I´ve had in seeing progress in the lives of those we are teaching.  The funny thing is that we had tons of appointments fall this week.  We usually teach a little bit more than 15 each week, and this week we only had 11.  But we had a ton of people at church, and we´ve definitely got some really good baptisms coming up.  We started teaching one man this week (random rant about frustration with English:  in Spanish, you just say things how they are.  For example "Ahhhhh sí la gordita que vive por allá" is not rude or offensive even though it was just said "Ohhh yeah that fat lady who lives over there".  Really, we started teaching a viejito, an old guy, this week.)  But anyway, he has been trying to stop drinking for a long time now, and after our lesson Tuesday on the word of wisdom he has not drank/drunk/whatever the right word is (sólo sé que no ha tomado desde entonces).  It´s incredible what the Lord can do for us when we show our faith in him and keep trying, even when times are tough.  Also, Cesar attended church for the first time this week.  It definitely took much longer than we wanted to get him there, but he had a really good experience and he´s really progressing toward baptism as well.  AND we´re going to be able to start talking with his wife soon.  Which is awesome because baptizing matrimonies is way better than just baptizing one person because they can get sealed in a year!!!!  I don´t think they say "matrimonies" like that in English.... what´s the real word other than "couples"?  It´s all really cool to think about your English starting to go away as you learn more Spanish until it actually happens.  The learning more Spanish part is cool, just not the forgetting English.  And I still have an American comp so this is ridiculous that I´m forgetting my English.  There are just some words that we always say in Spanish.  Anyway, the point is that we´re just really excited to start teaching both of them.  That´s really the reason everything is so, so, so worth dropping life for two years, coming to Chiapas, and walking around all day, rain or blazing sun.  If they choose to do what the Lord wants them to do, they can be sealed in the temple with their two little girls in a year as an eternal family.  And I will have had the opportunity to have helped them just a little bit to get there.  That is the reason that mission call packets say (I don´t remember how exactly it says it but something like this) "More happiness than you have before experienced await you as you serve the Lord in this labor of love among His children."

I am so incredibly gratefully that the Lord has trusted me enough to give me this opportunity to serve him among the people here, and although it seems tough at times, and all that happens in a day is that our appointments fall and afterwards we just get rejected door after door, the people who´s lives are changed when they accept and begin to live by the Gospel of Jesus Christ make is more than worth it. 

I love you all tons and hope you´re doing well.  Enjoy summer and all that stuff!

Con amor,
Elder Nickerl

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