Week Twenty-six: "Long email, but it's worth the read."

Hola Mi Familia!

Wow! What a week it has been! I´ve learned so much this week! I hope my stories and thoughts make even a little bit of sense.

First off, Heavenly Father has a plan for especially designed for each and every one of us. So Ines didn´t get baptized this week. So long story short her husband works in the Oriente, which is pretty far. He works for twenty days and is home for ten. I´ve never even met him. Because he has been opposed to her getting baptized in the past he needs to sign a paper now saying that he´s fine with it but Ines told us that her husband was going to be working a "double shift" of 40 days! We found this out two days before her baptism. I was so stressed out! This isn´t the first time that I´ve had to tell someone that they can´t get baptized for purposes other than themselves. But I´ve always seen miracles because of it so we pushed forward. We got permission to get over the phone permission from him so we went to her house to call him and she wouldn´t let us talk to him about the baptism. And that´s when we knew that something was up. So we decided to postpone her bautism. It´s so hard to watch someone you love plead with you to be baptized when you know that they are ready but something or someone else is holding them back. But I´ve learned that we´re here as missionaries to baptize converts and in order to have the support in her home she needs to wait a little bit longer. Luckily her husband now is going to come back in less than two weeks so we are going to work hard and pray hard that he´ll have his heart softened.

Hermana Corado, una amiga, y yo

We found a miracle family this week! The Salas family! Ah! They´re so great! We first taught Martha the mom last week and then we taught the whole family this past week and Julio (her husband) is so interested in the Gospel and told us that he wants to change his life. They have five kids and we´ve only met three of them, one of which is 14 and can get baptized but we are going to meet the two older kids soon and we are so excited! Julio, Martha, and Kayer (the one that´s 14). and the two younger daughters all came to church this Sunday! It was the best! Finding a couple that are ready to accept the Gospel in their lives and get married here in Santo Domingo is so rare! But we found them!

And guess what! We found two! The other family we found was a miracle! The Villareal family! Oh man I love them so much! They live super close to where we live and we normally don´t contact near the house (I´m not sure why because our neighbors are golden) but we passed by their house and felt so strongly that we needed to contact them. Turns out that they listened to the missionaries about a year ago but never asisted because they felt content where they were at. Well we taught them the Restauracion (I don´t know how to spell that in English) and the spirit was SO strong. We taught more with the Bible in the lesson than we usually do because we felt prompted to do so and Fatima (the mom) was blown away. She almost started to cry. She had doubts about the God head and we helped her answer them with the Bible and she was so excited we felt like she was going to walk to the church right then and there to be baptized! And her husband is so great! He is a bit older than her but he cracks us up! He always says that whatever his wife says goes, so if she says that they´re going to church then they´re going to church. They have such an awesome relationship and its so funny and cute the way they talk. AHHH they´re the best! He was and still is married to his ex-wife that lives in Spain and we talked to them about the law of chastity and they are finishing up the divorce process this week! They can´t wait to get married and get baptized! It´s a miracle! On top of that they already had two copies of the Book of Mormon in their house! Such a miracle! 

I love this work so much! I´m eternally grateful for the experiences and oportunities I get to have here on the mission! It´s absolutely the best!

God loves us so much! He sent His Son Jesus Christ for us! I know He lives with all of my heart and I know that the church is true! 

Sometimes we contact people that really don´t want anything to do with us and just want to combat our beliefs. We were heading back to the house at night and needed to drop off a big bag of stuff and so we dropped it off and then noticed that we still had five minutes left so we headed out to contact and we contacted a couple. The man was very nice and we could tell that he already knew what we were doing. He invited us to go to his church so we could compare messages to see which one is better. I told him that we aren´t here as missionaries to compare messages with others but really we´re here to invite people to pray to our Heavenly Father to know for themselves if it´s true. He asked me "and how do you know?" I explained to him that I´ve prayed and I´ve felt through the spirit that it´s true, and that I know it with all of my heart. He went on to tell me that my answer practically is invalid and that we can´t receive answers that way. That God works differently than that and that we need to rethink our decisions. 

I left that contact wondering what good we had done and why Heavenly Father wanted us to spend our last five minutes of the night contacting this man that was completely closed off to the truth. Then I remembered what Elder Holland told us in our conference. He said that the Atonement never was easy for the Savior, and so this work never should be easy for us. If it´s easy then we´re not working hard enough. I learned so much that night and thought a lot about how our Savior felt as the same people that he would die for were rejecting Him. I realized that this work never will be easy but it will always be worth it, because it is the work of the Lord. 

I love being a missionary and I love this Gospel!

Keep on keeping the faith! I love you all!

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Beutler