May 26th, 2014 - Weekly Letter

Family,

This last week has been good.....but let's just say that I think the Lord wants us to learn something. So we have been doing an activity lately to get the members to give us references of the people they know, and it has been really good, in the aspect of getting the references. So we have been asking the members, when we visit them, to write down ALL of the people that they know that come to their mind while we sing a hymn, and then after we say a prayer to ask God who of those people would be ready to hear the gospel....and it's been working good. We received a lot of references. And we even saw some of the fruits of the activity. With one sister, she felt good about one name, and so she invited this person to eat with us and her the next day, so we went to her house and we talked a little bit and it was really cool. She said the next day she would come again to visit with us, and didn't show up. We called her and she said the next day, and didn't show up again and doesn't answer us any more, so that was kind of hard, especially when we thought we found success. And so we started to visit all of the other references that the members had given us, and all of them rejected us. We haven't found one that has accepted us. So that was hard. About 80% more or less of the people in Mexico are Catholics, so the answer is always the same. I'm Catholic, I was born Catholic, and I will die Catholic. It saddens me every time because the majority of the people don't even know what they believe in....they're just Catholic because they were baptized when they were babies.

So yeah, we saw that the references haven't been working, so we started talking with everyone on the streets. They accepted us....but nobody lives in our area. The thing about this area is that it is probably the richest area in ALL the mission, and there are a lot of fancy things in the area, so a lot of people come from all around the city, so the people that actually live in the area are usually in their houses, which we can't do anything about because we can't knock on doors. So that is a hard thing, but a good thing at the same time. We are all working for the same cause, so we are giving a TON of people to other missionaries, but we don't have any work for ourselves. Actually, we had to drop some investigators that weren't progressing this last week because they haven't progressed at all in forever.

So that's been the situation here. And on top of that, yesterday we received some hard, but good at the same time, news. Yesterday they closed our ward, Lagos. It doesn't exist anymore. The stake president said it was because the ward was inactive for too long...which I don't know exactly what that means, but there was no progression in the ward. We found out that this area is one of the hardest areas in the whole mission, because the mission president told us as missionaries to not worry and not be sad, because it's not our fault. The area has been dead forever. But that just makes me want to have success more because then we can show that miracles exist. So now half of the ward is going to one ward, and the other half to another ward. So that was kind of weird.....a lot of the members were crying because Lagos has existed for a long time!

But in all of these hardships we have seen success. This last week we got a reference from the zone leaders of a widow. So we went to her house, and we realized that her husband was a member, but she never had the chance to get baptized, but her husband already passed away. So she wants to be able to see him again and live with him forever, so we are preparing her baptism for June, so she is cool, but very very old. All of these hardships remind me of Ammon and his brothers that go to teach the Lamanites, but have way more failures than successes, but it tells us in Alma 26 that they suffered with patience, and then the Lord blessed them. They ended up starting to convert people, including some of their leaders, and that eventually led to the Lamanites living more righteous than the Nephites.

Although we have these hardships, I know we will see success. We are already seeing it, although it is only one person, that is one more person that is going to come unto Christ. If we suffer with patience, I have a firm testimony that the Lord really will bless us. And apart from these afflictions, I have seen a lot of progress with my personal testimony! I have learned a lot, and continue to learn every day! I know that the most important part of the mission is to returned convert, so I strive for that every day!

Thanks for all the love and support! I'm excited to see a new week here in what was once Lagos....love you all!!

-Elder Loveless