alcohol, sickness, and dominating satan

Wow. miracles miracles miracles.

My companions name is Hermana Ignacio! she is 19 years old(birthday in march) and has only two weeks longer than me on the mission.(she left the mtc right when I got there, but has a transfer more than me cuz i was in the ccm for longer). I’ve learned a LOT about following the spirit and communication with your companion.

This week was interesting because my companion has been sick (dizzy cuz not enough blood has been getting to her head so we lost about 4 days of work. I took the opportunity with excitement because I had actually been praying for an opportunity to study more and strengthen my testimony more. I’ve been learning that the spirit can only reach and touch the hearts of your investigators as far as the depth of your own testimony. I’ve been working harder and harder to study more in depth the basic principles of the gospel so that I can testify with more power and confidence.

We’ve been teaching more by the spirit this week, which makes all the difference. I also realized that we need to have fun (thanks to hma martinez´ teachings) and have a strong relationship or the people aren’t going to want to listen to us. Like why would someone want to listen to a message that brings happiness if we’re not happy?? So we had a tire race down the street. hahahah. I found some tires lying around and handed her one and said something like ´I’m going to win´ .. ´distance´ in my broken spanish and we raced! Rolled those things down the street! Laughed, joked. It was awesome! So the goal of the mission is to have 14 new investigators every week (meaning having a sit down lesson with new people that you’ve never taught before) which hardly anyone reaches in a week...and guess what?? We had 16 nuevos with only 3 days of working this week! When we're happy the spirit comes! Crazy how I never really realized that before. Don’t be stressed about anything in life! The church is true! We can have peace if we pray and read the scriptures! We know the purpose of life! This is a gospel of happiness! If we get discouraged, it means we don’t have faith that God is going to win. Christ has already won, conquered all!!! We’ve beaten satan! so next time you see something awful in the world or news, just tell satan nice try bud, but Christ has already won and just smile as you strengthen your testimony and spirit force field and share the gospel to help your struggling brothers and sisters.

Friday i was on a split with one of the sister leaders, hma ayalla and I felt prompted to go visit joses house(a recent convert). As we were about to knock on the door jose came up to the door DRUNK. I’m talking blood red eyed drunk with a bag of alcoholic drinks. he told us he felt guilty and so we came in and kinda talked with him and he agreed to get rid of the drinks, so we were about to poor them down the drain aka I had a drink in my hand when his parents came in!!! Bad news. They took him inside and jose went upstairs and his parents were just crying, miserable. PERFECT timing for us though. Why? cuz before they never EVER would listen to us. They would let us come into the house and teach their son, but never would listen cuz they’re ´catholics´. So perfect timing? ya, we cuz we comforted them and they agreed to have us over saturday to get rid of the drinks with them. So saturday we had a lesson with the WHOLE family and they agreed have the elders over on monday(today) morning to give jose a blessing and to be there. Yup, so we present all this to the ward council and the bishop volunteered his family to go over and give jose a blessing. So this morning with the bishop, his wife and son (who is the exact same age as jose) came and talked with the family for 2 hours with us! SO incredible how the Lord uses these challenges to bring about miracles (aka humble this family.) sooo cool. I’m excited to keep working with this family. What was also amazing was looking back and forth at this broken family without the gospel and the parents crying, desiring so badly to be better parents and to heal their family, pleading for help, and seeing the result of a family centered in the teachings of the church, of Jesus Christ. Amazing what we have to offer the world. To heal families.

church is true, i love cusco!

Hermana Malorie Black