Hermana Mercado's 18th letter from Chile

What can I say.... I'm tired. A little stressed, but happy. Whitewashing a sector is interesting. We have no basis to go off of, so we are just doing the best we can. The first thing has been to try and pass by all the members in our ward that live in our sector. We are also trying to find some of the investigators that the Elders were teaching before. As it is, we don't have a lot of set citas, but when all else fails, we contact. 

It's only been the first week, but we've had a few miracles already. There are like 6 or 7 condiminiums here, so we're not allowed to contact the houses in those. The houses that are outside are really nice as well, and one day we were contacting one street and I swear, we could tell people were home, but no one came to the door. Near the end of the street, one door finally opened and a twenty-something year old girl came out. Tammi, who is Catolica and studying in the University (I forget what exactly). We were able to testify about the Book of Mormon and about living prophets, and shared a prayer with her on her doorstep. She seems a little skeptical, but nonetheless interested and accepted our invitation to learn more. We're going to be meeting with her this week; she had to finish taking her tests last week.

One day we were looking up members that lived in the street Filodendros, and when we couldn't find one member we knocked at the house across the street to see if the neighbor knew where they were. The neighbor turned out to be a member as well, Juana, but she wasn't on our list of members. Anyway, she invited us in and we were able to chat a bit, get to know her, and share a spiritual thought before heading on our way. And then we saw her at church on Sunday. The Elders told us that was the first time they'd seen her in church since they'd been here. 

And then there's Maria Cristina. She's a menos activa that we've seen like every other day since we've gotten here. The first time we met her in the street, she told us she was a member, but she doesn't go to church because she smokes, but everytime we saw her she told us that we had to meet her grandaughter because she still goes to our ward with her daughter. We did actually meet her grandaughter during the week, because the father of Maria Cristina's grandaughter is our Ward Mission Leader, Marcos Contreras. The third time we saw Maria Cristina, we told her we had met her grandaughter and that she had to go to church on Sunday because it was going to be in the primary program. She didn't come on Sunday, but we decided to pass by her house to visit her. And she let us in. She told us that she usually doesn't answer the door when she sees that it's someone from the church. She also told us that she had had a dream that her grandaughter had called her in the morning to tell her to get ready for church because they were going to come by to pick her up. She had intended to go to see the primary program, but she had stayed asleep. She told us that maybe it's time for her to come back.

At the moment, I still feel like I'm walking around with my head cut off, but I know that the Lord's hand is in this work. We are just the instruments and we have to be willing to be guided.