Elder Riccardo Medrano: Confidence Booster

Dang it I am so jealous that it is snowing there I wish it would just snow here just once but nope that is not possible at all! I was at church yesterday and I looked out the window and it was raining, I thought it was snowing for a minute but then I remembered that I was in the DR... I will only miss two skiing seasons!

My new area is a lot closer to our house, we walk about 10 mins to our area which is cool but I didn’t mind walking the long distances.

Since we lost the companions that would always cook for us we are now sharing the cooking arrangements, we switch off every day and whoever doesn’t cook gets to do the dishes, so we aren’t always on dishes which is nice.

Well here is something that happened yesterday that was pretty cool! Yesterday in fast and testimony meeting Santa, a really strong member, went to bear her testimony. She started to bear her testimony and said she had a really really spiritual experience last Wednesday. I wasn’t really paying attention very well but when I heard her talk about the spiritual experience I looked at her and she was looking right at me. Then I remembered that we were at her house with her family and husband who is not a member of the church because he sells lottery tickets on the streets. Santa’s husband talked to the Stake President about selling the lottery tickets and the Stake President said it was okay because that is how he is supporting his family. He has a testimony that the church is the true church and that he wants to get baptized but he doesn’t want to go to church and feels awkward because he sells numbers on the streets. Anyways, the next thing that she said is that her family and husband had a lesson with the missionaries. She said something that gave me so much confidence and that I was fasting for... it went something like this - she had a really strong spiritual experience with one of the missionaries that is new to the field and it is hard for him to speak in Spanish and can’t really express his feelings and himself yet. But this one missionary’s testimony was short and only consisted a couple of things like "the church is true, the Book of Mormon is true, etc." she said that it was short but still so powerful because he was not scared to bear his testimony in Spanish but yet it was so powerful and could feel the spirit working with his tongue so strong. She said that from then on out that she learned the gift of tongues is true and had the most powerful experience. Santa’s testimony gave me a really strong confidence booster for my mission and for my Spanish!

After Santa’s testimony another guy came up to the stand and nobody knew who or where he was from. He shared that he was at work one day at the Panaderia Thani (thats right next to our church). It was on a Wednesday and it was rainning super hard and he see´s two Mormons with white shirts and ties running, smiling and laughing down the middle of the street in the pouring rain. He said since that day he was wondering what this Mormon Church was all about and why they were so happy to be running down the road laughing and smiling while it was pouring rain. After he sat down everyone started to laugh, because the Dominicans when it rains they all hide under a tree or a garage because it passes in like 10 mins haha. Those two crazy Mormon people running down the middle of the road was my companion and I because we were late to a meeting with the members of the ward. By the time we got to the church we were soaking wet, pants, ties, everything soaking wet. My tie was so wet that I twisted it to drain the water out and on the ground was a puddle of water just from my tie haha. See what the littlest things do to bring people to church and how they look at a missionary or even just a mormon and judge them right away on the streets. How they can easily judge our religion just by one simple thing like that!

Everything is going great. We taught five inactive families over the week and all five families came to church yesterday so that was really cool and six of our investigators came to church also!!! We were really excited and so was the Bishop about our work! Our week went well just the normal walking, working and teaching the word of god. :)

Love,

Elder Medrano