It was a great week here in Vista Bella. Right now we have 6 baptismal dates for our Noche Blanca, two of them being couples. We're focussing on preparing them for the 22nd, but also don't want to lose sight of finding new people to teach.
This week we did another example. We filled the sink in the relief society room at the end of our meetings, and using little nerf darts (fish or investigators), a bucket filled with some water that had "Organizaciones Auxiliares del Barrio" written on the outside, and a clothes hanger bent into a circular shape. The objective was to get the "fish" into the bucket with the clothes hanger. After several people trying, it was apparent that it was difficult to do so. Three or four were able to get into the bucket, but there were still plenty in the water "the campo misional". So then we took out a net (really just a clothes hamper/sack) and connected it inside the circular hanger. Then, Elder Richardsen was very easily able to collect all of the fish and bring them to the bucket. We talked, and the zone caught on right away, that the net is the resource we have at our disposal of the members. It doesn't matter how diligent, obedient, or how hard we're working, if we aren't using the members, we won't be able to achieve as great of results as we could, baptizing family-references, along side the members of our ward. And as soon as we leave, those investigators will have a net to catch them if they fall. It was very interesting to see everyone come to those conclusions.
We had one of the most interesting lessons of my mission yesterday. We met a muslim, and were able to share with him. You have to understand, these are more than extremely rare here. Everyone in the Dominican Republic is some type of christian. His name is Erkan, from Turkey. He speaks more English than Spanish, so we talked with him in English. We learned a ton about him and his religion! It was amazing. The more we talked, the more I began to fall in love and admire certain pinciples of the muslim faith, while at the same time increasing my testimony that this is without doubt the true church of God. It was an eye-opener for sure. His entire life, he was taught that christians are bad people, but doing some travel, he found out that that's not the case at all. There's probably a 99.9999 % chance that he'll never leave his religion, he's very devout. But he told us he'll come to church Sunday!
All is well in Zion, and as Hermana Pichardo, a sister in our zone, would put it, "Pues, the church is true" (in a Dominican accent). Thanks for everything, everyone!
Love,
Elder Brady
 |
| Goin to paint some walls at the Stake Presidents place! |
 |
 |
| Elder Brockbank, a former zone leader of mine, came back to visit while we were playing around at the church today. |
 |
| Look Ma! I can cook! |