Hermana Abbigail Harper: PROBABLY the MOST INSPIRATIONAL THING of my LIFE...

Hey Fam,

Well this week was as crazy as I told you it would be last week….but even more so because the schedule changed last minute. Let's start with Thursday. Wake up wayyyyyy early and go round everyone up to bring them to the capilla at 8am. President Torres and his wife along with Elder Uceda and his wife show up a bit after 9 and the whole thing lasted probs like a half an hour max. First Hermana Uceda talked for about 5-10 min and started to cry. She said she was expecting to arrive to a group with only a handful of people and was shocked when she arrived to a full room on a Thursday morning when people have work and what not. Then Elder Uceda spoke about faith in Christ and enduring to the end and having FHEs, family prayer, etc. It was really sweet, and afterwards all the members talked about how much they felt the spirit and how much they loved the meeting. Then they took pictures of us and stood at the back while everyone waited in line to meet him and shake his hand.

When they did this about 25 people also handed him envelopes with their tithing (we aren’t an official branch, more just like a project of the mission. So for church headquarters we don’t exist, so the members can't pay tithing. There's not an account for it to go to) Anyways, so after a few envelopes Elder Uceda tried to hand them over to President Torres, but President was like I can't take those, we don’t have an account here, they're yours. So Elder Uceda was like hmmm…we'll have to fix that problem. But apparently it'll take a couple months to authorize things but I feel like way soon we're gonna get our capilla!

Then Saturday as planned we left at 5am to go to Cuenca. The training started at like 1pm and went to like 6:30. But honestly it didn’t even feel like 5.5 hours! It felt like 2 or something. I didn’t even get drowsy at all after traveling red eye. A miracle. But for real I don’t even know where to begin with how much we learned. Probably the most inspirational thing of my life. I took like 10 pages of notes. But they were all things our mission needed to hear. One of the main focuses was OLA. Oracion. Libro de Mormon. Asistencia a la iglesia. We need to ensure that all of our investigators have the complete chance to develop their faith in Christ through reading the Book of Mormon and experience a true repentance and conversion through true personal communication with our Father in Heaven through prayer BEFORE they enter into the waters of baptism.

He also talked a lot about how specific prayers are powerful. We can't just ask the Lord for revelation about an investigator, we need to ask him specific things that we can do to help an investigator and from there study until the inspiration comes. And that we may have to wait a while but when the Lord makes us wait, it’s a win-win situation. We learn. We progresss. We develop our patience. We develop our relationship and communication with the Lord. I'm not explaining this right but it was pretty much 5 hours of pure inspiration. Incredible.

Hermana Lujan, mi mama! Reunited!

From there we traveled right back to Naranjal, got home at like 1am and then woke up a few hours later to round everyone up for church. We had to move sacrament meeting up from 10am to 9am this week as at 9:30, so still in the middle of the meeting, we had to leave to catch the bus to Guayaquil for consejo. Well me and my comp and the zone leaders. We arrived, ate lunch, and then had a short and sweet consejo with Elder Uceda for like 3 hours. (apparently consejos are normally like 6) I think it was short cause he had to catch his plane home. Once again, pure inspiration. I'll have to show you guys my notes one day. Haha but he talked a lot again about helping investigators to learn to do things for themselves, and also about working with the members. The period has ended where the missionaries find and teach and baptize by themselves. Gone. Doesn’t exist, this mentality anymore. The new vision is that we gain the trust of the members and help them to help us in the obra. But consejo was great. I saw Hermana Catmull, Hermana Wiscomb, and Hermana Nazer! And also Hermana Lujan and Hermana Brenes! Good times good times.

Ok... Well, this week we might have a baptism of an older couple named Isela and Ancelmo. They are both super sweet and pretty much accept everything we say. I love them so much. But after these training sessions with Elder Uceda, we are gonna wait and see what happens this week to see if they are ready for baptism. We are gonna help them even more to develop their faith in Christ, etc. Well I have been so spiritually edified this weekend I have barely even scratched the surface of everything that I have learned. I am so excited to get to work and apply everything that Elder Uceda taught us. I'm out of time, but things continue to be going great here in Naranjal. I'm loving every minute of it. Update me on your lives everyone! Love you!

Xoxo Hermana Harper