Week 41 - Viru

This week was a great week here in Viru! My companion and I are learning a ton in our studies and we have had some pretty good success this past week. I cant believe how fast this change is flying by. I remember my first change in the mission seemed like it was going to be an eternity!
We had a really awesome multi zone training this week with President and Sister Rios and two other Zones from Trujillo. It was an awesome experience and we learned a lot. We also got to eat pizza in the end! Score! (There are pictures from the multi zone training on the mission blog)
This week we worked with a few families that are part member families and we worked quite a bit with the family that I talked about last week, Carlos and Elisa. We had a really awesome lesson with them yesterday. We talked about prayer a lot and the lesson went very well. They are very willing to learn and to progress. In the end they told us something interesting, however, that when we are there they feel super excited to study the Book of Mormon and to pray. When we leave, however, they get busy doing things and don't really give much thought to doing these things. What they said made me think a lot about the talk from Elder Holland this last conference that we had. We all get excited when we learn things about the gospel and when we hear a powerful testimony, but a lot of the time we fall back into old habits and the feelings don't really stick. My homework on the side for this week is going to be this talk by Elder Holland. It is a real barrier for just about everyone I think, but I know we can overcome it. For the meantime we left a small picture of The Savior with this family, so that they can hang it up in their house. Hopefully that will help them remember the small things like praying and reading that are so important.
We also started teaching a young man this week who has a really strong desire to be baptized. He has come to seminary for quite a while and has a ton of friends in the Church. His family isn't really super supportive and we don't usually baptize people in our mission that are younger than 18 years old without their parents too in an effort to help them stay active for their whole lives. This boy may be an exception, however, he has desires to serve a mission and to lead a good life. Who knows he could end up being a mission president someday or a Branch President. Everyone's got a divine potential.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord as a missionary. I know this is the Lords work and he is directing it.
I have included a photo from last week at the temple. This is the Viru Zone.

 This is the Viru Zone.

Elder Muñoa and i 

Elder Cruz, Elder Miller and Elder Muñoa