February 23, 2009

Family family family!

Hola hope that all things are going well for all of you. I got some updates from some of you. I´ve come to the conclusion that I love you guys a lot, miss you a ton and wish I could be with you but if it hadn´t been for all of you and your helping prepare me for this it wouldn´t be possible so I have to serve with all my heart might mind and strength to honor all the sacrifices that you have made for me!

That being said i´ll give you the highlights and what not from the week. After I email ya´ll this last week we went to talk to Melanie again to make sure she was doing alright. She had given us all of her cigarettes on Sunday night and when we got there she said i´ve got soething else I need to talk to you about. It was a little scary cuz we thought that she was bummed out for some reason but it just turned out that she had been saving the best surprise for last! Ha, so yeah, she handed us the last of her weed that she was saving to have a pre-baptizm bash. Luckily she felt the spirit that she didn´t want to do It and then told us and we quickly thanked her, flushed it down the toilet and explained to her again the 5 things of the word of wisdom, which marijuana falls under… haha it was pretty hilarious. Anyways long story short, ana and her children are not ready to be baptized yet cuz she still lacks faith. It sucks really badly cuz we try to instill that faith in her but she just doesn't take it. Its ridiculous. Anyways were still working with her and would appreciate your prayers of faith!

Felipe, what a kid! We had a breakup yesterday after church cuz he´s such a nice kid that he didn´t want to enjoy the spirit of the church without his parents and family enjoying it too. It's a really hard situation to explain in 10 minutes so i´ll do my best. His dad is really catholic, that sucks. anyways his loyalty is first and formost to his family. So he asked his dad if he could be baptized and his dad said yes but he knew that if he were to do it it would make his dad unhappy so he didn´t want to do it. We sat there and he cried for a really long time and then we just explained how he can fix the problems that he has with his family by being an example to them. He didn´t understand at first. He kept saying he wanted to solve the problems in his family first but we kept explaining that he couldn´t do that without the love of Christ. It took a while to help him understand this but he finally did. He decided to ask his parents if they would take the lessons. He said that if they would he would continue to take them but if they said no, he would stop as well.. yeah that was really scary so last night, right after the lesson we decided to start a fast! It was really scary, I can´t lie, he has been prepared from before this life and to lose him over something like that would suck. Anyways not two hours later he called us and told us that his parents accepted! Were going to teach them this upcoming Saturday or Sunday so please pray for us! That was truly the lowest ive felt in a long time and then the highest i´ve felt in an even longer time when he called.

Other than that nothing all that big! Just tracting and keeping on keeping on! Life is good. Oh, yeah we had a baptism this last week! THAT WAS AMAZING!!! Melanie is crazy legit! Honestly she was super ghetto when we found her but now she has this crazy amazing testimony of repentance and how she was alone before but now knows that she has a family in Christ and in our Heavenly father! It was so awesome to hear her testimony after I baptized her cuz she was just on fire! She knows about the hard times and now she knows about the good times too. She practically commited all of our investigators at the baptism saying "if you haven't made the decision to be baptized, DO IT!" it was so rippin sweet! We love Melanie!, we´ve struggled a lot with her but the best things in life don´t come easy! How can we expect to be able to apply the atonement in our lives if we haven´t ever seen struggles or looked into the garden of Gethsemane. I´m not saying that any of us will ever feel an inkling, not even a second of pain like the Saviour did when he suffered for us but i´ve learned that from suffering comes strength. As the Lord promised, he makes our weaknesses strengths if we apply the atonement and have faith in him.

Well fam i´m straight up outta time but I love you like crazy and hope that things are well with you! I pray for you often and hope that all is well with you all. Seth your advise is always little nuggets that keep my chin up throughout the week! I love you all! Keep your respective chins up and know that there is someone down here in the dirty dirty that thinks of each of you often and cant wait tosee you all soon. P.s. I show of our fam pic all the time. The Chileans eat that stuff up. For some reason us Americans are like some novelty to them! Haha its crazy. There hilarious with all there odd quirks.

Alrighty peace, love and a hug from me to you!

Elder livingstone!