This week has by far been the most uneven of my entire mission. Never have I seen this amount of success in one week; never have I seen this amount of failure in one week. It definitely goes to show that absolutely anything can happen on a mission.
I'll start off with the bad news, as much of it is still fresh in my mind (that, and I want to end on a positive note). This week, Diane was supposed to get baptized on Friday night, but at about 1:30 Thursday afternoon we got a text that told us that she wouldn't be getting baptized. Apparently, her mom, who was on date to be baptized next month, very suddenly began going down a very dark path. She decided she didn't want anything to do with the church (which included her daughter joining it), and that life would be better if she moved far away- possibly out of state. It was heartbreaking for us (still is, in fact), but the worst part of it was probably going and telling everybody who was planning on going that this young girl that our branch had fallen in love with wouldn't be getting baptized. Also this week, we had somebody else who was getting baptized drop us because her husband didn't want her speaking with us; somebody else who was going to get baptized had a mental breakdown and told us to never come back. Several people who promised us they would come to church didn't, which means we had to drop their baptism dates too. When we went to a missionary meeting to get our supplies, we were given everything we needed except for copies of the Book of Mormon...and we only have once copy left to hand out.....and the next time we'll be given an opportunity to get more will be in late July....To top it off, this last week was my very last Zone Conference ever as a missionary, which meant that I had to give my departing testimony, something just about every missionary dreads.
This week very easily could've gone down as the worst since I've come out on my mission, but for every piece of terrible, terrible news, there was something amazing and incredible that happened. First off, a few days later we found out that Diane's situation isn't quite as sad as we were originally told. Diane's mom calmed down a little and said that Diane could still be baptized, but she's not super thrilled about the idea. Also, Diane wants to stay with the members that they're currently living with, and her mom seems to be open to that idea. We're going to be meeting with her mom and one of the members they're living with this week to discuss Diane's future.
In addition to learning more about Diane's situation, we also set six baptism dates this week! One was a former investigator where the missionaries just stopped going by for no reason; we stopped by her house and set up an appointment, and she agreed to be baptized in the first lesson! Shalisa's date is for July 22nd, which apparently is a very popular day to be baptized on. The other five dates we set are for that day too! We have a TON of people in our area that only speak Spanish, so we decided we would go out with somebody from our Branch that speaks Spanish so that we could talk to all of these people. We found eight new investigators, including a family full of people that are interested. We were able to set a baptism date with Armandina and her grandkids, Chris, Gabriel, Raymond, and Brianna. We're so excited for them!
Also, I turned twenty this week. The jury's still out as to whether that's a positive or a negative event.
If I learned nothing else this week, maybe it was that even in the hardest of times, we can still see incredible success, because if the Lord is our ally, we cannot fail.
Hope y'all have a great week!
Elder Jensen.
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