Week 34: Rosa and Rosa

So this week has been pretty awesome.  We have been having all sorts
of success.  We actually had 2 people that accepted baptismal dates
and we have been working with them.  We have been meeting other cool
people and the cat lady Patricia is showing so real potential.  We as
a district have all been seeing sucess as we had 2 women named Rosa
get baptised and confirmed this weekend.  One of them, the one that is
in the pictures that I baptised, was a lady that we contacted in the
street a long time ago on a raining and windy day, I wrote down the
wrong house number and we had a hard time getting in contact with her
on the phone, but she kept reading the book of mormon every once in a
while so we worked on finding her agian and finally after a month and
a half or so found her, taught her the first lesson, and then gave her
as a reference to the sisters since she is a single lady.  She is
really amazing, she had to go to her boss to quit her job so that she
could go to church and everything but she fasted and prayed and got an
answer that it was nesicarry, and then her boss came back to her and
just moved the time so that she could get to church.  She bore her
testimony after the baptism and it was really powerful.  She will be
an awesome member here.

The other Rosa I gave her my first ever baptism interveiw.  And it
wasent exactly the simplest interveiw, but long story short after a
good couple hours of interview we got her to the water and she had a
really good experience.  Problably the most intimidating language test
that I have had to do so far was giving someone an interview that has
their salvation weighing on it, it would have been nice to get it
started out with one that was a little less complicated but whatever
it happens.

So yeah basically the whole district has been on fire this week and it
has been really fun to get to be right in the middle of it and I have
really been feeling the load of being in a leadership position when my
district has a bunch of people that are marked for baptism and all
that stuff to organize when the mission is really struggling,  I dont
think I got to bed on time once this week.

The power of the Book of Mormon in conversion has been very apparent
in our work here and my testimony of it has been strenghtened this
week through the trainings and our experinces applying it in our work.
One of our sucess stories is Borge.  He is a guy that Elder Alves and
I contacted about a month or two ago now that is friends with one of
the members here.  We never got his contact but we were able to get
him a Book of Mormon and the restoration pamphet.  We then since he
didnt show up to church the day that he said he would all that time
ago, we have just been asking about him whenever we talk to Jorge (the
member friend).  Anyways we finally got ahold of him through Jorge and
we got an appointment with him.  We found out as we were asking him
some questions that he had been reading the Book of Mormon for the
last month or so and has made it all the way to Alma 54!  He said that
several times as he was reading he was crying because of the way he
was feeling, and said that he has been taking up a lot of his spare
time to read. We also found out that he has a huge burden weighing on
him that he lost his mother when he was only one year old and then his
grandma that raised him and was basically like his mom passed away
when he was 18.  He is now in his 30s and it is still somthing that
hurts him everyday. We then taught him about the plan of salvation and
how he can have an eternal family through the temple and he then, in a
very powerful spiritual moment accepted to be baptised so that he can
get to work on rejoining his family together.

After church and the baptism on Sunday we had a meal with a recently
reactivated family with the sisters and the brodericks and everything
that was the most rediculous banquet that I have ever seen.  She had 4
main dishes that each one of them would have been enough for all of us
and then 7 deserts. and she was one of those ladies that thinks
somehow Elders can eat 3 times as much as a regular person based off
of how much she kept giving us.  Î am still pretty full and havent
really ate anything since.

Anyways the work is coming along and life is good here.  I love you
all and you all seem to be doing awesome. Especially Jesse who looks
way older.  I love the new pics of the House.  Super cool. get job
with everything so far that you have in there.  Elder Bednar is coming
to our stake conference here this next weekend so we are super excited
for that.  Love you and have a good week!

Elder Hobson