Search for the 99

July 13, 2013

Dear Family and friends,

Hola from the bathtub of the world...where the forecast is...ahem--rain!! More like the shower of South America, the cold shower. All is wonderful here, and I am hoping that you are enjoying your summer for me!!

This week we have the awesome opportunity to focus on less actives. Here in Chile...it´s common. I mean, Chileans love the gospel but become inactive wayyyyy too often. So, as a mission, we are focusing on rescuing the less actives and giving them small assignments to help them return to church. This means that sister Howell and I compiled a huge list, from the ward list, of all the members and are now searching them out, one by one. The joke is that how Christ left the 99 and searched for the one, we are leaving the one to search for the 99 lambs. cause there is a lot of menos activas to rescue!! 

One family in particular I just know has SO much potential to return. They are the family of one of the most active families in the ward, and we are teaching them the lessons from scratch. But honestly, the Lord is helping us so much to challenge them to do the things to reach the temple. We were seated around the table, with the remains of a delicious once, and Hermana Howell and I read a story from the Book of Mormon verse by verse explaining how to apply it to our lives. Leonardo, the father, said "But I don’t know, the book of Mormon bores me. I don’t know. we´ll see." but we could see the spirit working with him as he held a book of Mormon for the first time in years and read the verses. Maria, his wife, was reading intently: "oh! It´s clear! This means the Lord is going to help us in our trials by strengthening us" and in the end, we challenged them to begin to prepare to go to the temple. One step at a time!!! 

There have been so many miracles. Ivan, an eternal investigator, told us this week that he is going to try to live the word of wisdom and came to church this week for the first time EVER. it was the very end of the lesson and it just came out of him..."hermanas, last night I told all my friends, who meet together to drink and smoke, that I wasn´t going to come again." I MIGHT have almost cried. And Camilla, an investigator that I want to bring home with me to meet all my friends (because I feel like her and Sarah Ballard are the same person..) is reading the book of mormon and living the word of wisdom and the law of chastity.. "Yes, I totally understand why this would be important."...que up the motab in the background! Huzzah!

I love you all. Go eat some ice cream and read the book of mormon!

Hermana Monroe