P-Day update week 68, 06/05/2023

Bueno bueno!!

This week has been awesome! We've seen some awesome miracles here in the area this past week!!

Some of our friends after we placed a baptismal date with them!

To start out the week on Tuesday we set up a Family Home Evening with a family that I mentioned a few weeks ago. It's a family of four, the dad is a member, but the mom and the two kids aren't! So this family went to church for the first time together about 2 weeks ago, it was pretty awesome! But when they were there they didn't have the chance to talk with a lot of members or really get to know anyone. And we always make sure that our friends in teaching have friends at church. So we set up a family home evening with them to introduce them to same families! It was a big hit! We had it in the house of the Relief Society president who lives close to this family, which was perfect because they're practically neighbors! We arrived right before 7 with the whiteboard from our house, and then left to go grab our friends! Once we got back and everyone arrived we started with a spiritual message! We talked about the importance of The love of God. We gave everyone there a post it note, and had them write one way they've seen the love of God in their lives. Once everyone had written on their post-it we had them put their notes in a bag all together. And one by one we each grabbed a note from the bag and shared what it said! Each note was different, some talked about how God had given them health, a house, work, and their families! And once everyone had gone we focused on the families! We talked about their role in The Plan of Salvation, we talked about the temples, and a few other things to focus on Christ and families! As we finished up the spiritual thought each person had the opportunity to share their thoughts and it was really just a great experience!! After the spiritual thought we finished with a prayer and played a few killer rounds of pictionary! It was rigged, the judge (Elder Perez) was also a player for the other team. I think he cheated but I don't know how haha! As we finished that up we ate some sandwiches for the snack and were there chatting with our friends for a little while! Then we all went our separate ways after a bit, overall it was an awesome experience for this family to get to know some new people! We're very excited for them!

Intense weekly planning face!

El Basquet!!

This Saturday we had a really cool activity for the youth! It was a "super picnic"! We have known about it for a while and have been inviting our friends for the last couple weeks and we were able to have three friends at the activity! It started off with a little get to know you activity which was followed by a few different water balloon activities (don't worry we didn't participate haha) after that we did a treasure hunt through the church! They started off with receiving a clue with their group. From there they ran around the church picking up different sticky notes that had a letter on one side and the next clue on the other side! The goal was to get all 15 letters which formed a phrase It was cool because a lot of the letters/clues were pretty easy to see around the church, but even if they grabbed all the clues, they wouldn't be in order! So that was kinda the message, that God had given us an order through the commandments that we can follow to return to live with him. And if we follow this order we can receive what the Lord has in store for us. But if we run around doing whatever we want we won't be able to find exactly the thing that God wants for us! It was really cool!! It was also an awesome opportunity for our friends to meet some people in the church! It was a huge success! In fact these friends that went to the activity went to church the next day!!

This week has been a really good week when it comes to helping our friends get prepared for baptism! We've been focusing on making sure our friends are progressing in the church. Keeping commitments and show fruits of repentance! We've had to let a few friends go who haven't been progressing all that much lately, but I know that's part of this work! And when it comes to our friends that we are teaching it's been awesome! This week we visited a lot of people and we put 5 baptismal dates for this month of June!! All of these friends have gone to church except for one, and they are all getting excited for there baptisms (as well as us!). I'll make sure to keep yall updated on the happenings with these coming baptismal services!

Let's sew this book into every fiber of our being!!

The last big event this week was a missionary meeting we had on Sunday with all the different ward leaders and missionaries from the different wards and branches! We put a big focus this past week to make sure the missionaries brought their members, and oh boy we had a good turn out! Usually for missionary meetings in the ward or state no one goes, but we put a big focus on visiting everyone and getting them to agree! So the room was nice and full with people! In anticipation for this meeting we had a Zone Council to talk about what we want to share with the leaders of the wards to help them help the Lord in this work! We had a great council and everyone participated and gave their two cents, we also practiced a musical number to share with everyone! And the day of the meeting itself we got there early to practice our song! Also, my companion and I were told that we were both going to give ten minute talks speaking on behalf of the missionaries from what we learned in the Zone Council! I had prepared it like a normal sacrament meeting talk, but when we all got there and President Morales (1st councilor in the mission presidency) gave his talk, I realized that he didn't want us to give talks, rather he wanted it to be like an interactive class! I had to change a bit my talk and how I planned on presenting it but I was able to get it planned out and have a fun time with it! It was honestly awesome! We talked a lot about the importance of this work, we talked about how easy it is to share the gospel. That the members should change the way they look at member missionary work, instead of delivering copies of the Book of Mormon or bringing the missionaries to meet our friends, it can be as simple as telling someone that God loves them. It can be as simple as inviting them over for dinner, really just living our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ! From there we talked about ministering our friends that come to church, rather, always being ready to say hi to the friends the missionaries bring to church, and going with the missionaries to lessons! We talked about a lot of other stuff but that was the basics from my part! As we finished off we saw a big change in the spirit that was in the room, we saw the excitement for the work start to shine in the eyes of those who were there! It was an amazing meeting, I'm so excited to see what happens from here on out and how the work changes! Also because we were short for time we weren't able to perform our song ://. But it's okay, there's always P-Day haha!!

Blue eyed cat

Well that's it for this week! We've seen great miracles this week, and we are hoping to keep it up and give it our all in these next couple weeks and months! I love you all, I invite you this week to watch the video that's found at the beginning of chapter 23 in the general Handbook of the church. It explains a lot how us as members can help the growth of our wards and share the gospel in simple and natural ways! The gospel is joy my friends!! Have a great week!!

-Elder Garnica