Monday, July 17, 2017

The Lessons I've Learned This Past Year Have Changed My Life

Hey everyone!

I´m OLD now!!! I reached a year on Wednesday here on the mission... Weird to think. We made pancakes to celebrate in the morning, y salieron muuuuuy buenos! 

One Year Pancakes
The personal lessons I have learned this past year have already changed my life. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be here serving the Lord. I can feel His love each and every day as I try to reach out to some of His other spirit children. Being a missionary isn't easy, but it is WORTH IT! 

I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who guides us at all times and has given us of the opportunity to return to Him through His son Jesus Christ. We are so very lucky to have such a perfect plan laid out for us, and I know that God does everything in His power for us to be happy like Him. The mission has been so far the most humbling year of my life, and I don´t have any doubt that Jesus Christ is at the head of this church that I have the amazing opportunity to spread the teachings He has given us!

The sun came out on Tuesday, which has been pretty good for us because people have at least been willing to open their front doors to talk to :) We found a couple of new people who we found and taught this week, one named [...] and another named [...]. They were both really receptive and we have return dates set :) 

We also found a CAPO this week named [...]. We were out in the middle of nowhere searching for an investigator we had taught before, but he wasn't there, so we contacted a couple houses that were in the area. We then found [...], a young man a couple years older than us who was in the middle of smoking a tobacco cigarette. He decided to let us in and we went to the backyard where we met his wife [...] and their little newborn baby :) We got to know them a little and they are both from Fray Bentos, another department here in Uruguay. [...] told us she was actually baptized in the church when she was nine years old, and went to the temple to do baptisms when she was 12, but then she and her whole family inactivated, so she said she didn't remember a whole lot. They are a super nice young couple and the Restoration went super well! The spirit was really strong and I guess [...] remembered something from church because when Elder Vergara was reciting the first vision, she joined in too and recited it with him!! Wow, it was amazing. And afterwards [...] was so happy when we left them a Book of Mormon, and promised us he would read it. We are so excited to follow up this week!

We went to our other area, Cardona early Saturday morning to work, and got to the church before Juan opened it up so took advantage of taking some model shots on a cool tree in front


We also found [...] again this week, and had a great lesson! After reading Moroni´s sweet promise, I asked him who should really ´convince´ us of the truth. He understood that that testimony shouldn´t come from us or any other person, but from God. He looked at us and said that he had never heard another religion acknowledge that it is God himself who must personally convince us of the truth. After we finished, his wife [...] came home and was super nice, so we are hoping on teaching the both of them the next time we swing by!

[...] passed his baptismal interview a couple of days ago! So we should be going through with it on Saturday! We were planning on going to Nueva Helvecia since our pool is broken, but now we can do it here in Rosario because people with be coming here to fix it. So we are excited!! Hope you guys all have a great week!

Elder Layton



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