His Best For The Servants Of The Lord

This is the last week Elder Avila and I have as companions. He just passed his 2 year mark a couple days ago.

Elder Avila and I have been working a lot with our quiosco. (Kiosko)  I don`t know if I have mentioned it yet but we were chosen, among a few others, for a missionary experiment.

We have these box-like missionary advertisement-stand that have soul-searching questions on them to draw interest.  We have 8 stands and each has its own question. Questions like "How can I be a better person? " or "Will I see my loved ones after this life?" or "How can I strengthen my family?"  There are links to Mormon.org Questions, where the project is really taking place.

Each day of the past week we have been out in front of a mall for a couple hours with whatever question we choose to use that day.  The point of this project is to experiment with other forms of missionary work.  We are just waiting for people to come up to us rather than approaching them, collecting data and waiting. It’s cool and we just smile at everyone and say hello.  When people come up and begin reading the stand we greet them and hand them a card and explain that if they’re interested they can visit the page online. We ask them if they’d like to have missionaries visit them in their homes and if so, we collect their information and addresses.

It’s been a pretty cool experience and there has been the classic Mormon / JW competition.  They’re usually a little ways off smiling at us, and we at them.  I’ve gained a lot of respect for them and we have some important things in common. I just wish everyone would pray and ask God all the questions they have.  We haven’t had as many lessons with investigators this week due to the missionary project we are working on. 

Sunday, after church, 2 men dressed like church members walked in the chapel, after church with guns to try and steal the tithing!!   We weren’t there and only heard about it hours later. Luckily only a couple of cell phones were stolen and now the security is being heightened!  The people say our church is the richest in Colombia and that’s not a good thing to be spreading around.  I’m not worried about our building. I’m just hoping the leaders spread the word for more caution. The doors get locked after every entrance.  No worries we are safe! Haha

This Sunday was a really good Fast and Testimony meeting and Elder Avila and I both bore our testimonies.  We had a lot of investigators attending including Ricardo and Jasbleidy who are getting married on the 16th.  We have had some good Family Home Evenings these past couple of weeks and a less active (Sandra) is starting to reactivate.

I am beginning to teach English here every Saturday, and I’m getting the whole class program figured out. It’s going to be really good.

Our Ward Mission Leader has to be one of the best Mission Leaders in the world!!  Brother Ganoza has really been sacrificing tons of time and effort and is always here for us! He is really motivated and into the Missionary work.  He plans activities and gets the other ward leaders to help out. He stood up in Ward Conference saying that it was a blessing to be able to provide lunch for us and that he will always give his best for the servants of the Lord. I felt really humbled. He has an amazing family with wife and 5 children.

The ward is starting to build momentum and ward leaders are asking to accompany us at our lessons.

Love,

`Elder Zierenberg