Sunday, January 8, 2012

Feliz Belated Navidad - 26 diciembre 2011

For us it is a pleasure and a privilege to have your daughter serving in this mission. We have enjoyed a wonderful Christmas lunch. Attached you will find a picture of your daughter, the zone and our family. We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

With Best Regards,

President and Sister Montalti

and our children


Familia!

How are you all doing the day after Christmas? Did you fill your
bellie with lots of pavo or turkey and sleep it off by sleeping in
today? I wish I had that same luxury as you, but every day we have a
structured schedule of waking up at 6:30 am and going to bed at 10:30
pm.

The last two days, Christmas Eve and Day, we were limited in the time
that we could go out and share the message of the Gospel with the
people because we had to return to our apartment by 2:00 pm. The
mission president found it would be too dangerous for missionaries to
be in the streets while the people partied on the streets either drunk
or shooting off fireworks or buying munecos. It was chaos. As we
looked out our windows both nights, the constant dissonance of
honking, booms of fireworks, and yelling reached our ears. I do not
even want to know all that the city does to party, but it must have
been NUTS!

In our apartment, we had every intention of sleeping the WHOLE day to
celebrate the birth of our Saviour, hahaha, because we are just
exhausted all the time from the work we do here, but our zone leaders
called us and gave us specific assignments in Preach My Gospel,
scriptures, and a program that I do as a new missionary called the
First 12 Weeks. (This is a program initiated by the First Presidency
for incoming missionaries that was started in August 2011). All our
hopes for sleeping flushed counterclockwise down the toilet. Did I
tell you that the water flushes the opposite direction here? So that
is what we did for the holiday weekend, but the members did send us
home with lots of good tortas (cakes) and turkey. Yummm...turkey. But
the highlight was talking to you all. As I hung up, I cried with such
happiness. I miss you all very much. I do know that if I was allowed
to talk to you more though, I would be more focused on wanting to talk
to you on the phone than the missionary work, so I know that rule is
inspired by the prophet for all missionaries.

Something I read from another sister missionary in an email this week
was if we ask for specific questions in our prayers, the Lord will
answer them in specific ways, or in other words, we will receive
specific answers to those questions. That has blessed me so much this
week. I thought I would share that with you and challenge you to do
the same when you pray at night. You will be blessed more than you can
know.

As for the work at hand, we are teaching an 11 year old named Karen
Preciado. She is so excited to get baptized on the 7 of January. The
one thing she lacks though is support from her family, especially from
her parents. They gave her permission to be baptized, but she will not
continue to go to church if her family does not take interest as well.
Please pray her mother´s heart will soften to listen to our message.

We have encountered that same fellowship problem in the ward that I am
serving. We have no problem finding people and baptizing them. The
problem is retaining them as an active member of the Church after they
have been baptized. They might have a testimony of the restored
Gospel, but if the members do not fellowship them and just stay in
their little clicks, they will not stay active. They will just stay in
their old habits. Please pray that Hna. Reyes and I can find a way to
bring this ward closer together and fellow our investigators. We are
not having the greatest of luck.

Thank you for all your uplifting words and advice in the phone call
yesterday. They went down in my journal so I can refer back to them in
times of need. I have seen an especial change in Nathan in regards to
his growing testimony. Keep it up, Nate! I love you all, my brothers
and sisters! Give my nephews a hug and kiss!

Love to all! Feliz Navidad y prospero ano nuevo,

Melanie or Hma. Forbush

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