Hermana Kirsten Anderson: Almost-one year mark

Well to celebrate my almost-one.year-mark we got to come to Guadalajara (again) to sign visas. I spent the whole morning with Hna Tupounuia and Hna Mortensen in the city center of Guadalajara. Of course we couldn´t help but tour around a little and obviously we had to eat tacos to celebrate the occasion. And the rest of the week was absolutely wonderful as well. The work is quickly hastening in Prados Verdes.

We´ve been working with one part-member family that is really progressing together. The mom and son are members of many years, but the spouse and other sons haven´t been willing to listen to the missionaries until now. One of the sons has been in jail for a long time, but we´ve been teaching his wife who has faithfully attended church and completed her commitments. She was about to get baptized, but decided it would be better to wait for her husband to get out of jail. They weren´t sure how long he´d be there, in fact they were expecting many years more, but after many promised blessings, fasting and prayer, he got out this week. We didn´t know he had been released, but one morning while working close-by, we felt prompted to pass by. We found him and his wife there waiting for us. They had no way to call us or anything, but the wife had prayed asking for us to pass by and poof, there we were. While in jail, this hermano had an alma the younger experiences. He had read the entire Book of Mormon, cross-referencing it with the Bible, and I´m pretty sure he knows more about the Book of Mormon than most members! He truly has a desire to change. He was also shocked to hear that we´re also teaching his dad. 20 years with his wife as a member of the church and he has never wanted anything to do with the church. I don´t know how it happened, but the Lord has softened his heart and he too is changing little by little. We´ll see how they progress over these next couple weeks, but I think together as a family they will really be supporting and helping one other in these changes.

We´ve been working a ton with the members and it´s making all the difference. With the members it makes it so that there´s not only two or four missionaries in a ward, but there´s one or two-hundred. There´s days where we don´t even walk in the street. It´s just one appointment after the other in the houses of members with their friends and neighbors. There´s so much work to do and I feel like sometimes there´s just so little time. I´m trying to make everyday count cause I´m starting to recognize that these days are limited and these experiences are priceless. I love this gospel and I love seeing the way it changes peoples lives.

Let us all press on,

Hermana Anderson