Patience Pays Off

So this week was just like any other week. We knocked a bunch, hoping to finally find someone new to teach and get some investigators progressing. We've been here 6 weeks, but haven't really been able to teach many lessons or feel as if we've had a lot of success. But we've been pushing along and trying our hardest. It has been pretty hard to see any results from our efforts, and at some points it seems as if Satan was just taunting us, like when we found someone super solid just to find out she was on vacation and leaving in 2 days. But this week we really tried to push forward and put all our effort into making this week successful. 

First of all, birthday dinner with Shellie and Lizhet didn't happen, Shellie got off of work way too late so we're planning that for another day. 

Tuesday we went on exchanges with the zone leaders so that they could pass an investigator to us. So that day was a lot of fun. We just tried to visit some former investigators and less actives, then we went and taught the recent converts after that.

Wednesday we had some stuff, I can't really remember, we had apartment inspections that we passed with flying colors. And we had English class which wasn't successful yet again.

Thursday we tried to contact a bunch of people we've gotten a lot of times to come back, but never got in. We also had dinner with our branch President. He leaves to Mexico in a week to get his visa renewed so we were talking branch business and such while we had some bomb food.

Friday we had weekly planning.  Our lesson with Griseyda didn't happen - it was her son's birthday. So we went to find, but got a call from the zone leaders saying that they wanted to exchange again, so we did that.  And we had English class which was semi successful. 

Saturday we knocked around in the morning and had studies and such, then we went to meet someone at an appointment who wasn't there. Then we drove an hour to Sumter where one of our members invited us to a family reunion where a lot of non members and less actives would be and we were able to commit a less active to go to church the next day, so that was cool. We never heard if he actually did though or not. 

Sunday was the best day of the week.  We had church which was really good.  We also learned there that stake and mission boundaries are being changed a bit. We now have part of North Carolina in our mission, and the Columbia stake just got part of the Florence stake as well. So our area just got a bit bigger. Then after church we did some studies, then broke our fast. Then we had an appointment with Noelia, our investigator that I have the best feeling about. So we went over there at 5 and talked with her and her roommate for a while before her sister came to help us out in the lesson. The lesson was super stellar. The spirit was super there and she told us that she really enjoys coming to church and that she would love to keep hearing our lessons. Her roommate was also just as accepting to the lessons, so we finally had some super stellar success. It was awesome. 

Today we have a zone party p-day where all the zone is getting together and having a fun time. In the morning from 9-11 we had a mission wife push up contest, to see which zone could do the most push ups. I contributed 125 pushups the first hour and then was too weak to even do 1 more after that. MVPs for this zone were Elder Woodley with 2200 pushups and Elder Wilkins with 1500 pushups. But we definitely still lost. The results come in an hour. 

Oh we also learned about transfers this week. Nothing is happening in the Spanish world so far. President is still switching things around so well see what happens, but for now we still don't have any hermanas up here in the branch. 

This week I've gained more of a testimony of prayer and patience. I've really been praying to have success and to really have the ability to keep going at it. And God has helped me with that, it took the entire week to prove myself to him but the answer did come and I can start to feel the turn around come for this next transfer. 

Elder Bertoch