June 17, 2013

Sanderson Family,                                                                                    June 17, 2013

Rough week here in Edinburgh West. The work is slow but miracles abound here so our spirits are still high :) This week we found a cool family called the Scott family. Its weird because they are from Brazil and speak pure Portuguese so the last name Scott doesn't really fit. Anyways the mom (Sandra) was taught by missionaries in Brazil before and knows a lot about the church. They just moved here 2 weeks ago.  The struggle with them is that even though Spanish and Portuguese are similar, its hard to communicate with them. So the first lesson with them was rough but all 3 of them accepted baptismal dates for the 14th of July. The crazy cool thing is before we went back for the 2nd lesson Elder Killpack and I prayed fervently for the ability to understand them and teach them in a manner that would be meaningful to them. Anyways we sit down with them and after the opening prayer it was as if they were speaking English to us. It was nuts! We could understand them perfectly and when we spoke back to them they understood as well. So grateful for the gift of tongues. We have a YSA branch here so we are going to bring by a return missionary from Brazil to continue helping us out.

Another young woman we are working with is named Daisy. Her family are recent converts to the church that just moved into our area last week. They are the Garcia family and they are preparing to be sealed in the temple next month. Legit! The only problem is that for some reason the missionaries that taught the family never baptized the 16 yr old daughter Daisy. She has been actively going to church with her parents the past year just for some reason has never been baptized. We went over there to find out what we can do to help her get baptized before her family goes to the temple so that she can go with them. We taught the Plan of Salvation with an emphasis on Eternal Families. The spirit was so strong but for some reason Daisy just sat there with her arms folded and really wouldn't let us teach her. We tried being nice then Elder Killpack got pretty bold and told her that without baptism she cannot be with her family after this life, there is no other way. We then committed her to be baptized by her dad this Sunday and she just stared at us in silence for like 8 minutes. Finally the dad broke the silence and just starts pleading about how bad they want this for her. The mom was sobbing and everybody started to cry but Daisy just shut off and wouldn't talk to us. Really sad story but we have the faith that Heavenly Father will touch her heart.

Other than that things are going pretty slow. I know its a new area but the work is not moving forward as fast as I would've hoped. Elder Killpack is being a trooper though and keeps us fired up. haha we like to call it his "greenie fire". So grateful for him and his desires. A quote we have kind of adopted as a motto of ours is "Its hard to beat a man that never gives up " - Babe Ruth. Hope all is well at home :) Love you all

con amor,

Elder Sanderson

Texas McAllen Mission