Sunday, January 27, 2013

Barcelona Mission: (Hospitalet) Week-09 2013

We are doing well here in Hospitalet.  We really have been focusing on finding more investigators. It is a focus in our companionship study and we have been making goals of numbers of contacts that we would like to do each day. Some days are tougher than others but I am so grateful for the enthusiasm of my companion and for her motivation. This week was a little tough for us because we had many citas set up-almost every hour of everyday. Yet, 80% fired on us and we found ourselves struggling. We did back up plans, (not the best that we should have done), and we did make a lot of phone calls. We have been trying to focus on getting to know the members of our ward still. Yesterday we set up a food calendar for the members to sign up to feed us for this month. It didn´t have as much success as we thought it would. We do have citas to eat and we will call those members ahead of time to confirm. We have specific plans to help this week go more smoothly and successfully. Some of these goals that we have come up with are these:

-Be more obedient and diligent in our studies, planning, and prayers.
-Call the day before and/or the morning of to reconfirm our citas planned.
-Make at least two back up plans for every hour of everyday.
-Contact more and give more powerful testimony to the truths that we know.
-We want to make some 3x5 cards with the metro stops/areas of our area and make a list of the people-members, recent converts, less actives, investigators, and antiguos- on each card, so that if all of our citas fire we have a list of places to go and people to visit. This will help us make our back up plans.

These are a few of our goals and plans that we have created. We know that if we have the faith necessary we can help the mission complete our new goal of 20 baptisms per week. We know this is possible and we want to be a part of it!

My companion is incredible. Hermana Rivera is actually who I needed in my life. She is such a good example to me and she is so excited about the work! She gets sad when we don´t do our best. This helps us to try harder to do our best at all times. It has been such a pleasure working together with her. I don´t feel like I am alone in tackling this new area. We each give 50/50 to this companionship and it´s wonderful.

Despite our harder days this week, the Lord did bless us with some miracles. Hermana Rivera is sharing an incredible one about this less active family that we are working with. I will share one about a reference that we received from Elder Cerqueira. He contacted a Romanian woman who lives in our area. We called her, set up a visit, and she fired on us. We called and set a visit with another reference for a different day but she also fired on us. She happened to live right next to the Romanian woman and Hermana Rivera thought to try contacting Delia another time. We rang the bell and she let us in. We knocked on her door and she let us right in. Hermana Rivera was amazing at starting up Lesson 0 and getting to know Delia and a little about her family. It was incredible the friendship that immediately was formed. This woman, Delia, is amazing. She has so much faith in the Lord and she has so many miracle stories that she told us from her life. She was beaming with happiness talking about her Savior, Jesus Christ. She assists a 7th Day Adventist Romanian church near Sagrada Familia. She goes to church every Saturday but she is really interested in getting to know more about our church, and she hasn´t heard really anything about it before. We gave her a Book of Mormon in Spanish but told her that we would get one in her language to which excitedly responded. We have high hopes for her and can´t wait to see her again.

Our two fechas Lupe and Fausta are incredible! Lupe is amazing! I just want to be like her someday. She says the most intensely personal and special prayers I have ever heard. Whenever she prays I think of the words broken heart and contrite spirit. She really has a broken heart and is always ready and willing to learn and a contrite spirit. She is so humble and special. Her husband is a less active member now returning to church. Seeing them together is a delight because they love each other so much. He bore testimony of the sealing power in the temple and how he can´t wait to get sealed to her. He says that he knows now is her time to get baptized and that her heart is so ready to accept the gospel. Every commitment we ask Lupe to do she has already done and received her answer-pray about Joseph Smith being a prophet, pray about the First Vision, pray about the Book of Mormon, pray about the Plan of Salvation, repent from sins, etc. She is so prepared. I have never met anyone so prepared in my whole mission. Hermana Rivera and I are definitely blessed with this wonderful opportunity to teach her. She is incredible.

We are excited and ready to start a new and better week. We already have the week full of citas with members, recent converts, investigators, and less actives. So this week we will be focusing on back up plans so that we try to avoid as much as possible what happened last week.

Love,
Hermana Johnson

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