Hello Family!
Just want to say that I love you all!
This week was very interesting.
First off, Monday we had p-day but I had to go to the offices to do something for my documents so we actually wasted the day in traveling there and back for basically nothing. So the President gave us permission to do the things we needed on Tuesday. So we bought groceries and then cut our hair and cleaned the apartment.
Wednesday was an incredible day! Incredible in one sense. Flash Floods. Wednesday we stayed in the house of a member for 3 hours (with permission from our leaders) waiting for a terrible rain storm to pass. Well, it never passed. So we left anyways. The street LITERALLY was a river. I could have gone white water rafting. Immediately we were soaked. We ran to the bus stop and luckily it was already waiting. The bus wasn't affected because the street was concrete and higher up so the water passed. We then were going to go to another area of the ward to see an investigator. We got off the bus and we are walking to the station in about 2 feet of water. Up to our thighs almost. It was incredible. I wish I had my camera in the moment but we didn´t so we didn´t take a picture. I stepped in a pothole which was hidden so I went in up to my waist. My companions were laughing and then another one did the same thing so it was sweet justice. Probably a tender mercy. It was actually really fun.
Anyways everywhere was literally a river or a lake. As we are waiting for the buses. Literally all of them start to change their poster sign things in front to "fuera de servicio" which is "out of service" the buses couldn´t leave due to flooding. Its about 7 o clock and we were thinking, 'well, lets go to near our apartment to the house of the mission leader to see how things are going'. We hopped on another bus which was heading towards higher ground. We get in the bus and are in the bus for about 40 minutes and we only went about 3 blocks. We then decided to walk. There was a huge traffic jam. We leave and are walking in the pouring rain, and forging through all the water. (definitely beating the bus) and we head towards the house of our mission leader. We get to his street and there are police blocking of the street because this was just a JET STREAM of water. Easily waist high. All of the water was funneled into this one street. And all the houses there were flooded with about 2 or 3 feet of water. So we forged through that and decided to go to the apartment to check on our stuff. We were afraid that the apartment also was flooded. So we kept walking/ forging/ swimming in the water, absolutely soaked. But having a lot of fun for some reason. The closer we got to the apartment the less water their was and when arrived to the apartment there was not a problem with anything. It was great blessing. Then with permission from the assistants we stayed home. Then the electricity went out. Yay. Then the next day we woke up at 4 to go to San Fernando to the mission offices.
In San Fernando we had a Seventy visit us. His name is Elder Zeballos. It was a great talk. We saw the numbers of the mission and everything and he talked about the ability and importance to speak English and Spanish. Did you know that if you can speak Spanish and English you can communicate with 80% of the church membership? And if you can speak those two and Portuguese you can speak to 90% of the church membership? He talked about preserving our Spanish and our English so that we can be instruments in the hand of the Lord in the future. It was very interesting.
Yesterday we had a miracle. It was great. There is an investigator since December that has attended every other week. He is great. He loves reading and listening to the missionaries. We stopped visiting him about 3 weeks ago. Yesterday he attended the church making it 2 Sundays consecutively. We set an appointment with him to talk about his progression the church. And also to drop him as an active investigator. Yesterday I did splits with the Mission Leader and we went to his house. The first 10 minutes were really rusty as I tried to guide the conversation to where we had planned. As we were talking the investigator asked the member what he thought about what we were teaching. The member who also is a convert talked about the First Vision and the Spirit. His testimony had such power that the Spirit immediately took hold of the conversation and started to guide us. I eventually found myself talking about the purpose of the missionaries, and then about the First Vision and then I challenge him to kneel with us in that moment and pray to see if he should be baptized. He did it. And as he finished I asked him how he felt. He said that he doesn´t feel anything different but that he does notice the ABSENCE of his worries. He took that as an answer. Right then and there the member and I invited him to be baptized in 2 weeks and he said Yes! I left the lesson with a testimony that the Spirit is the real teacher. It was a humbling experience. I love the Spirit!
Anyways, things are going great! I love the mission I love being in a trio, we can divide so much easier.
Anyways, I love you all!
Love
Elder Moore
