February 14, 2015

Familia:

This week has been so amazing!! We have had some awesome lessons this past week and have found some amazing people!! The mission is constantly getting better! We had a great concilio this past week with all the zone leaders! There was just a ton going on but it all went great! 

I forgot to write about it last week about the highest church attendance we have had in mission history! 5484 people partook of the sacrament last Sunday!! How awesome is that?!!! That is almost a 1000 more people that we had last year in febrero!! All the members are going out to work with the missionaries and it is literally strengthening the church all over the mission!! Everyone has caught the mindset of the gathering of Israel! aaahh!! We are so excited to see what the Lord has in store for Uruguay in these coming months. 

This week one of our converts, Maria, went out to work with us and took us to one of her best friends, Cristina. Cristina has had a really hard life. She has lost two spouses and a son at the age of 14 to cancer. She had entered into a state of depression. We had such a great lesson about the plan of salvation with her. Maria started the lesson off by testifying of all the peace and love she has felt from God through the gospel and about how she desired to share this with her. Maria gave the opening prayer the spirit came instantly. It was so special. It is hard to describe what was felt in that lesson or everything that really happened, we just taught directly from the Book of Mormon the plan of salvation and then brought it back to the restoration. Maria was participating the whole time in the charla and made all the difference in her testifying with the Spirit alongside nosotros. 

Another awesome lesson we had was with Soledad. She is the sister of Nadia (who just recently got reactivated). Every time we went over to her house, Soledad always ran and hid from us and never talked to us. This past week, Soledad’s daughter got really sick and was in the hospital for about 3 days. One day we were over teaching about the restored priesthood to Nadia and then Soledad walked in out of nowhere and sat down to listen. We talked about how Christ blessed the people that He loved and how he restored the priesthood to do the same. She asked that we could give a blessing to her daughter. It was one of those experiences where words cannot describe and one of those days when you just can’t wait to get home to write in your journal because you don’t want to forget a single detail of what was felt. It is such a privilege to be a missionary. Soledad, as a result of that experience she had, is now progressing towards baptism. THE MISSION CANNOT GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS!! 

Sorry that this has been soo short but I have to run! pday always runs short! 

I love you all so much! Let’s all try a little bit harder to be a little bit better this week!!

Un abrazo fuerte, 

Elder Staffieri