May 25, 2011

Bonjour!
I apologize for the delay! Sunday morning I woke up, and we'll just say I wasn't feeling too well. I called Sister Carter and described what I had, and she told me I had "gastro" or something. I'm not sure what the translation is in English, or if it's the same thing in English, all I know is it's terrible! She told me I couldn't go out and that I couldn't eat until I felt better. The only thing she said I could drink was that nasty bubbly water everyone seems to like here, or soda (but I had to de-carbonate it). And then she added, "and no dairy" ....and no more happiness! (for all you Brian Regan fans out there). So that's my story basically from Sunday to Tuesday. I'll leave out the pleasant details.
It was a good week! Unfortunately only one investigator made it to church, and we had planned on 5 or 6, but we'll get them this week. Yves is doing great of course, but he disappeared into "the mountains" for a few days because he had to work so he wasn't able to come to church, but normally he will be baptized this Saturday! (I think I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every time an investigator told us he had to go to "the mountains" for a little while and then we never heard from him again. But don't worry, he didn't disappear forever, he called us back after he came back :) ) We're super excited for him! We're getting all the plans in order for the baptism.
We had a cool experience this week. We went to an investigator's house for an appointment, but he wasn't there, so we called him up and he said he'd be an hour and a half late. We started porting (door to door) for a little while but it wasn't very effective. Then I remembered this little old lady named Rosaria that Elder Park and I had contacted forever ago and she gave us her address. We had passed by her house numerous times before and she was never there, but we were in the neighborhood and I decided we should to try her again. We knocked, she was there, and so happy to see us! She let us in and we talked for awhile (don't worry, we left the door open and stayed right by the door, so we were following the rules :) ). It was an interesting lesson. Neither of us had the impression to start teaching the Restoration or really start teaching anything at all. We just sat down and chatted for a minute and then she started talking. She talked for awhile, and we listened. Eventually she started talking about how she has always believed in God, but that there were times in her life, especially now, when believing was really hard, even though she wanted to believe. We opened up the Book of Mormon to Ether 12 and read verses 4-6. The Spirit filled the room and she said it was a beautiful verse of scripture. Then she started crying and told us she wants to know if she will see her daughter again who had died, as well as other family members. We testified of the Plan of Salvation, and all of us could just feel the love of our Heavenly Father so strongly. We left her with a scripture to read and set a time to come back to teach the whole plan of salvation (we had to go see our other investigator), then I said a prayer. I felt overwhelmed during the prayer and I started crying too. It was a super powerful lesson, and we didn't teach anything, but the Spirit definitely did!
As we were walking away, I pondered about how lucky we are to have the knowledge of the plan of salvation and the Priesthood on the earth to seal us as families forever. We can't even comprehend how much Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have done for us. They have made our salvation and eternal happiness with our families possible, and all we have to do is be obedient to their commandments in order to bring about this blessing for us and our families in the eternities, and it is and will ALWAYS be our choice to have it! Let's not forget all that Heavenly Father has set in place for us to succeed, and let's find what we can do better to make sure that all that he has prepared for us will not go to waste, but that we will be able to receive all the blessings He has in store for us. Be thankful! I know I need to do it a lot more. Je vous aime tous et je vous souhaite une bonne semaine!

Love,
Elder Tudor