Hello!
It's been a lot of fun over here in Beaufort. Elder Wright and I are getting along amazingly and the Lord is helping us to help his children out. We had a pretty slow night on Saturday. All of our appointments fell through and all of the houses we wanted to visit for backup plans were guarded by big, unleashed dogs haha. It was really weird. We talked to a Jehovah's Witness lady that wouldn't accept a pamphlet from us but then told us that she's open to read whatever we give her, so we just gave her a Book of Mormon and for some reason she accepted that haha. It was interesting. BUT the next day we had probably one of the more productive days of my whole mission.
We got up at 6:30 as usual for Parris Island and we found another recruit that wants to be baptized and has been reading the Book of Mormon during his free time. He acted like he hadn't been reading that much, so we asked him where he was and he told us he had just finished 2 Nephi! I'd say that's a TON! Especially considering how little free time they get to read or do whatever else they need to. It's inspirational to have those recruits as an example of sacrifice and diligence. They have something like 4 hours of free time on Sundays and all of those people in the LDS service are giving up 2 of those hours to worship the Lord. After church was over, we went out on "rescue visits" with the ward to see some less actives and try to reach out to those that haven't een visited lately. I went out with the Ward Mission Leader to this community out by the sea called Fripp Island and we found a man that hadn't been visited in 15 years and he told us he'd prefer for it to stay that way, but we invited him to church and he told us that we could stop by the next time we were in the area to talk to him more. He was really nice. It's amazing that people can slip under the radar like that. I wish you could have seen Fripp Island, maybe one day we'll come back to it :)
That night we had dinner with some members and we let them knwo that it was Elder Wright's BIRTHDAY! So they put candles on the cake they had made for us and we all sang to him. Baby's first birthday :} I'll send some recent pictures sometime soon. Just before the dinner appointment, we headed over to see Luis Castillo and taught him about the first vision and tried to figure out his doubts before setting him up to be baptized on the 13th! The spirit was so strong in the room and Elder Wright bore such a strong testimony of how the Lord will provide a way for his family to accept him being baptized. Man, I was so proud of him! My little baby's all grown up and sharing the gospel. When we went home at night, Elder Wright told me, "I think that we have days like Saturday so that the days like Sunday are twice as good." I couldn't agree more!
We had Zone Meeting on Friday and I was asked to train on applying repentance in our own lives so that we can more effective teach it to our investigators. I was really nervous about it because that's a pretty bold thing to speak about, but I felt great about it :) I found a quote by elder Bednar that I shared that goes something like this: "Guilt is to the spirit what pain is to the body - a warning to prevent further harm." Something like that... I compared carrying the burden of past sin or transgression around to recruits that try to hide something as serious as a broken rib so that they can just get off of Parris Island ASAP. They ALWAYS find out that is probably the worst thing you can do because when you don't heal properly, you're not only hurting yourself but also your platoon. I invited everyone to repent. I feel really good about it :) It totally wasn't me though. I'm really not that good at trainings. I just had fasted and prayed a lot that the spirit would teach everyone in that room that repentance is the way to purification and powerful teaching and testimony.
I love you a lot! Have a good week :)
Con muchos abrazos y besitos,
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