Miracles!

Quick update from Hermana Maki :)

I can´t believe how quickly the weeks are passing. This week was wonderful with lots more rain. However, I want to share a big miracle that my companion and I saw this week in our area. Last Monday, we had a zone conference with President Garcia and his wife. It was soooooo great. 5 hours of talks, advice, and things that we needed to hear the better the work. Towards the end, President stood up and asked if every companionship would write on the whiteboard at least one name of an investigator that they were going to baptize this week. (Not having a name was not an option) We thought, and thought, and thought, and put the name of our investigator Sandra who is progressing the most..even though her baptismal date is a couple weeks out.. After everyone had their name(s) he said "We´re going to do something different this week. We´re going to have a baptismal service here in the stake center as a zone this Friday at 6pm, and all of you will be here with the person you wrote down and we´re gonna have one big baptismal service! This was Monday, well our lesson with Sandra on Tuesday night fell, as well as Wednesday night. We called her on Wednesday night and asked her about her decision to be baptized and she said she certainly isn´t ready and needs more time. We talked to her for a while, and she is really set on waiting and said if she were to be baptized this week it´d be from pure pressure and we certainly didn´t want that.. so there we had it, we weren´t going to have a baptism this week. We were pretty sad...but started thinking in what we could do..prayed quite a bit that day..

We had a lesson Wednesday night with an investigator  Monica, her husband Norton, and their two kids. Their family is pure gold. A family that every missionary wants. Anyway, Norton and Monica are getting baptized soon, they´re just waiting on the divorce papers from Norton´s previous marriage so they can get married. Their son, Alexander, is 13 and is going to be baptized, but he is the typical 13 year old with a little bit of a rebellious attitude.. Sometimes during our lessons he´s on his phone or even falls asleep, but just in the past couple weeks we´ve seen a difference in him, and he´s been coming to church every week with his parents.He wants to wait for his parents to be baptized though..

 Well we had our lesson with them on Wednesday night and invited them to come to the big baptismal service with us on Friday night..and then Alexander looked up and asked us, "Can I be baptized on Friday?" 

WHAT? You should´ve seen my face, I thought I was going to fall out of my chair.. Long story short, he had his interview the next night, and was baptized on Friday. 

The baptismal service was awesome. There were 35 baptisms, it took almost 3 hours and he was starting to get reallyyy impatient, but it was truly a great experience. The room where the baptismal font is, is kinda small..so they had a laptop in there and a big screen in the chapel with skype turned on so that everybody could watch the baptisms and stay in the chapel. Pretty cool. It may not seem like a huge deal, but to us it really was an answer to our prayer. My first baptism, and one that I will never forget!

When we have faith in the Lord, we will see miracles in our lives..that I can promise each one of you :) 

I love you all and pray for you always!

Hermana Maki 

Rainnnn

Helloooo everyone :) This week went by fast..

 I experienced my first Merida rainstorm, it was NUTS. Many people before the mission told me that it rains like crazy here, and they weren´t even lying..it was strongest rain I´ve ever seen..one member told me it was gonna rain until Monday, the next member told me it would rain until Wednesday, and our ward mission leader told me it´s gonna rain until January..so we´ll just have to see! I bought a great umbrella for like $7 whole dollars, so I´m not even worried about it :) I´ll attach a picture of the streets which were practically flooded after 5 minutes! Ok, not flooded, but there was ALOT of water. 

However, what I really wanted to share this week, was how I felt during that day (Friday, I think...) We had 2 members bail on us (they were gonna teach a couple lessons with us) and three lessons back to back fell through. It´s safe to say the people here don´t like the rain. They all get in their hammocks and are dead to the world until it stops..

So anyway, we´re walking down the flooded street, my skirt is drenched, we had had like 2 lessons that day, our lunch was very small compared to how much we are normally fed, and neither my companion nor I were feeling too enthusiastic..however, I began to think in that moment about the Savior. As I was about to open my mouth and compain about how terrible that day was, the thought came into my head...."Is this ANYTHING in comparison to what the Savior went through? Is this period of adjussting to the food, the language, the everything...anything in comparison?" and I think we all know the answer. When I begin to think about myself, when the natural man in me wants to be selfish, it´s that moment that I must forget myself and focus more on the people that I´m here to help. The savior would turn outward when the natural man would turn inward. As I thought about that, it gave me strength to finish the day. As I knelt down that night to pray, I simply gave thanks to my Father in Heaven. for the rain, for the small serving of food I had, and for the experiences that day that made me stronger, and forced me to rely on the Lord. 

Also, a picture of the beautiful Merida temple! :) That´s all for this week. I love you all! 

Hermana Maki