Week 20: She Felt the Spirit so Strong!

Dear Family and Friends,

Thanks so much for everything you all sent me for my birthday!!! :) I had a fantastic birthday; honestly one of the most different but fun birthdays of my life! I'll relate a little bit of what we did for the rest of my birthday:

We went out and worked later that day and had a good lesson with our long time investigator Jacquelin. She has been off coffee for almost 2 weeks right now, so we are way, way stoked about that! It's really been cool to see how much better she looks and how much help she is receiving for her studies. Anyways, we talked about a September 1st baptismal date with her and she said she would pray about it. Later that week she told us she couldn't come to church and that she didn't receive an answer to her prayer so she doesn't want to be baptized on the 1st. Ugh...that was really frustrating...and unfortunately it set the tone for our week. After that, we dropped by David Tani's house. We were going to drop by and see if our investigator José was home but David said he had to grab a jacket. Anyways, we went inside, they flipped on the lights, and they had a surprise birthday party waiting for me! :) It was really fun!!! We had Inca Cola (a Peruvian soda drink, kinda like Cream Soda) and a good dish that I don't remember the name of! Haha, they had a cake and everything, really, really fun! David and his brother Christian have tons of photos that they're going to get me so that I can send them to you! Anyways, later that night Elder Pineda (an elder from our district) from the ward Tobalaba (a ward in our Zone) called me up to wish me a happy birthday! It was really cool, a really good guy :) So all in all, an amazing birthday!!!

Sounds like Ammon is doing really, really well! What a good guy, I love him! :D Can't wait to get his package, that'll be really cool!!! Hahaha, I love him! :) Thanks for going down to see him Mom and Dad and family! Way to go Evan, glad he is getting prepared and everything! Congrats to Christopher Holmstead also, he'll be a really good missionary, I'm really excited for him :D I'm glad you are all getting involved in the missionary work! It's really an important work and everybody talks about how much responsibility the members have in addition to the full time missionaries! It makes me really proud to know that my family is doing their part :)

The rest of my week was really up and down... We didn't have a single investigator come to the chapel yesterday. Boy it was frustrating! Several of them have baptismal dates and it is horrible when they don't come to church because we then have to move back their baptismal date... Ugh!! The hardest thing was not seeing our investigator, Marta, come to church. We went to her house on Wednesday and we felt impressed to talk about baptism with her. She said that she had been thinking about that all week long and that she knew she had to be baptized and start this path. She accepted a September 8th baptismal date and we were really excited! We also took her to the temple last Saturday and did a temple tour with the sister missionaries over there! She felt the spirit so strong! After the tour she said she was prepared and excited to be baptized. She commented that her experience during the tour was "more than beautiful." :) We were STOKED, we thought for sure that we'd have a baptism on the 8th of September. But...she didn't come to church and it broke our hearts, honestly. Anyways, hopefully this week will be better and we can work closer with Jacquelin, Marta, and our 10 year old investigator, Osvaldo.

Well, today I got a call from the mission president's wife. She asked me if I would sing a solo for our Zone Conference coming up on the 18th of September! CRAZY!!! :S I have to sing a solo and sing in Spanish...in front of a member of the Quorum of Seventy. Elder Ceballos, a member of the 70 is going to be there for our Zone Conference...no pressure :S It's a song from like this Joseph Smith cantada or something ... IDK. I get the music tomorrow! Haha, hopefully everything will go well! I'm excited but also really nervous.

Right now the mail strike is still going on :( They have been on strike now for more than a month!!! My feet are doing okay! The other day while we were walking they were hurting me quite a bit. Thankfully I was able to just ignore it and keep walking!

So that was pretty much my week, everything has been going fairly well. I'm over 5 months out now! Whoot! :D Time is going pretty quickly, I cannot believe that almost a fourth of my mission time is complete. That is just nuts... I'm going to be home before I know it :S

Love you all, take care!

Elder Adam Bushman

Completos

"The first convert you want to  make in this church is yourself. When you are sure you have him/her converted, then you start on somebody else."  - Harold B. Lee