Spanish Success in FL

This week was occupied with some administrative stuff that seemed to sap a lot of time.  We had two more sets of trade offs to complete with the assistants and with a set of elders in our zone and were actually able to see some good things happen on both of those exchanges. I was with one of the Spanish elders in the zone for about 8 hours and we found 5 new spanish families!!! Elder Jones said he had never seen that happen in one day! Hahaha, I knew I was supposed to be a spanish elder!

This weekend was also a mixed bag of success and disappointment. On Thursday we dropped by to see an investigator family that hadn't come to church or returned our calls. They let us in and were still very friendly, but we soon found out the reason - they had received some very "anti" materials and had taken offense and are no longer willing to consider our message of the Book of Mormon.  Mostly due to random statements made by past church leaders about restrictions of the priesthood based on race. Which, of course, no longer even apply, but even  the fact that those restrictions were once in place was enough for this family to let go of the things they had learned and felt from our visits. Sad because this is the first time in 20+ years that the husband has ever even considered the idea that there is a God and we had just been starting to make some headway with him.

Last night we stopped by to see the lady I wrote about last week whose husband had been murdered. She sent her mom to the door with the Book of Mormon and the message that she didn't want to study with us anymore.  Heart breaking.  Satan is so good at what he does. Her elder mother (who had been super excited when her daughter accepted the baptismal invite last week) told us that she would "talk with her about it," so hopefully there is still some chance of salvaging that desire for a closer relationship with God.

Ok, enough with the downside - I saved the best for last!  Last night, the rain was coming down in torrential style, so we abandoned our designs of tracting in a certain neighborhood and decided to go see a referral.  As we were driving to the new area, we passed a certain home on a street that we had already knocked before and Elder Mecham said, "we need to stop and see that house again."  So we jumped out into the rain and ran up onto the porch and prepared to meet the same people again.  Surprise!  A new family had just moved in from Arizona and the husband has an incredible thirst for peace in his life.  We shared some verses from the scriptures with him and he was practically sharing testimony of the Book of Mormon at the end that this is something he feels he needs in his life!  Wow!  The wife had been hiding from us in another room during this whole discussion, but as we ended with a prayer she came out to pray with us and also felt the spirit very strong.   Wahoo!  There ARE prepared people out there!  Sometimes you just have to wade through the heartache and drudgery to find them.

Photos of the week: Elder Vader (aka me) caught on candid camera at the home of the Castillo family of the Spanish branch. We visited the University of Florida campus last P-day and toured the football stadium.  Saw a huge moth (probably 6 inch wingspan) on the sidewalk by our apartment.  It was neat because it had "eyes" on it's wings to fool birds or other things that would want to eat it.  Oh yeah, and i have no idea if banana spiders are dangerous or not.  I watched it devour several bugs that it was fed, but have no idea if it would bite me...

Here concludes this chapter of the Saga of Elder Howell. To be continued...