Conference Is Upon Us!

Hello family and friends!!!

So this week was alright, we had a ton of people fire on us.  We still taught 20 lessons and found new investigators, but all the people we found over the last 2 weeks kept canceling on us!!! In the last 3 days of the weeks we had like over 20 visits cancel but we kept fighting the war and working hard then the Lord blessed with a huge miracle on Sunday. Well two.  

We were sitting there praying and sweating for all of our investigators to come 5 minutes before sacrament meeting as always. (Can’t wait to actually sit and enjoy a meeting without worrying about our people coming ha ha) We were a little sad to only have two, because we were expecting like eight or nine, but one man named Eduardo walked in. He is an older investigator and to be honest, I had already put him on the ¨back burner¨ so to speak because he was always working and never had time to meet with us or to read or progress. But he walked in and told us he only works weekends now, but he can still come to church. And he can meet with us anytime during the week. And we were talking with him in church and he said he is super motivated right now with reading the Bible and praying and knowing which church is true. He knows he needs to be baptized, he just doesn’t know if this is the truth, or the evangelical church is true because his mom is a faithful member there. But it was a huge miracle!! He is a very humble man and wants to find out the truth and be baptized. We have big plans for him to be baptized on the 12th. And then I want to baptize his mother from the evangelical church of course.

And then the other miracle was this menos activo lady who came in to church. We contacted her in the street like over two months ago and she said she was a member but had moved here from Bolivia and ¨didn’t know where the church was.” I’ve heard that one too many times! So we told her where it was and tried to visit her and call her to pick her up for church but nothing, so we moved on. Then 2twomonths later she just showed up yesterday! Pretty good stuff. 

Ariel our other huge miracle from stake conference will be getting baptized on the 12th as well, hopefully with Eduardo.  And general conference is going to be great!!! I will be watching it in Spanish again, and we have this new sister missionary here who has only been in the field for four weeks so I will probably have to translate for her....I am going to try and find a member with a laptop ha ha.

But life is good in LA; it has actually been hot this last week. I think I have an infection on my toe next to my toenail, going to the doc this week. Here is a picture of it :) go Cougars this week, gotta beat them Aggies. Love you all!!

Elder Farah

The Latest Adventures of Elder Farah

 Elder Farah as a "Warrior" fighting the war against Satan at a Zone Meeting

 Elder Farah teaching how to burn the "distractions" and focus on baptisms

The latest beautiful sight from P-Day

Allí estamos

Well this week was full of great stuff and a good mission heartbreaker.  We had to change our preparation day to today because yesterday we had a zone conference with president.  

We had a great weekend of conferences. First we had stake conference as a stake here. It is a lot of work and traveling for these people. We had the meeting at a university and people came from all over the north of Spain, the wards and branches that make us a stake are really spread out here. One thing that hit me that I learned that I really liked was from an Area Seventy that came. He is from Italy and his talk was about taking what we have and giving it to the Lord.  He used the example of the apostles with the fish and the loaves of bread. Jesus said we need to feed all these people and they said we don’t have enough and Jesus said bring me what you have. So that is what they did, and look what Jesus did with it; he multiplied it and fed thousands of people. 

So the point was that we often think of what we don’t have instead of what we really have, and the Lord just wants us to take that to him and he will multiply it and make it better. That slapped me in the face so hard!!! And i loved it!! I don’t have much, but I know I can take it to the Lord and he will make me the person/missionary I need to be from my efforts that are far from perfect. It was so great!!!

Tomas is not getting baptized this Saturday, his family won’t let him. So that crushed us pretty good, he was so ready and excited and you could see the sadness on his face. And on top of that we can never go back but we did what we could.

We did see a miracle, an investigator went to Stake Conference and pretty much said I want to be baptized, and we were like what!?!?! So we have a visit tonight, and we are trying to get him baptized this Saturday, he has been an investigator for a while. Huge miracle!!

Them dang Utes. that’s all I gotta say.

Love you all!!! Spain is great, with these wonderful Spaniards

Elder Farah

P-Day with the District in Las Arenas

Bring on the Rain!!

Hello family and friends!!

Well life is good here in Las Arenas, we are seeing so many miracles and I have been pretty crazy with my huge district that I love. I have been doing a lot of talking and getting to know people, I need to know each one personally! But I love it and they are all great missionaries and it is really fun together. We are super unified these days and we are trying to get a baptism for every new missionary in our district, we have 6 new missionaries to the field!

My miracle from the week has to be the baptism that we are going to have on the 28th. He is a man named tomas and we were teaching him back towards the end of July. Then he left on vacation the whole month of August almost. So we tried calling him for a week straight the first week of September and nothing. Before he left he had a fecha so we wanted to start teaching him to get him baptized!! And then finally one day I called him after I said a prayer that he would answer and sure enough he answered. We visited him and now he will be getting baptized on the 28th. He literally said ¨yo quiero bautizarme´ music to my ears!! It was a huge miracle, and I am very excited for him and he is Spanish!! This will be my first Spanish baptism. I can’t wait for it.

We have built such a good bridge with the branch president and he had us over to eat last week and I respect his authority but at the same time we don’t postpone baptisms for anything!! If someone is ready and passes the interview and completes the commandments, they are ready to be baptized. So we actually had a very nice conversation (me and the branch president) and life is good and I respect him and he respects us. He is 25, we are like best friends! The 28th another soul is back in the kingdom of god!!

GO COUGARS

Love,

Elder Farah

It has been raining a lot more here, welcome to the north!

Adventures in Las Arenas

It's Wet Up Here!

Hello family and friends!!

Well the baptism of our 9 year old went great, and there was a great turnout form the ward. There were so many people there to support this family!! I have never seen this family so happy. And I highly doubt that they are going to be inactive again. Through this kid’s faith and his baptism they are all back in the church again. The whole family shared their testimonies after and it was a very sweet and kind experience. And it was so good for the new missionaries to see a baptism like this and get them excited. I love baptizing!!!

We have just been getting super wet the last few days, when it rains it pours up here in the north and this is just the beginning and it will get so much worse. And I am not excited for it because we do a lot of contacting especially in parks and on benches and that is how we find a lot of people, but when it is raining we hit the doors because obviously nobody will be outside. So I am going to try and start working with the members a lot more now that they are getting excited again and try to work of them during the winter so we can avoid a few doors.

We got 2 sister missionaries this week, so we split the area and I signed another piso contract. Luckily we have a senior couple up here with us so they found the piso and I just had to sign it. So it wasn’t a lot of work for us and now we are just trying to get the Hermanas’ up and running and excited to do the work. One is brand new and the other only has like 7 months. But the branch was excited to have them and welcomed them in with open arms of course ha ha.

This transfer will be busy taking care of my wonderful district between interviews, intercombios, and district meetings but I am very excited and just grateful to serve others. It is just another way to serve! 

And to end of course GO COUGARS!!!!!! What an upset, can’t wait to see what they do during the season.  

Love the Elder in Las Arenas,

Elder Farah

Yeah Boy!!!

Well we saw a huge a miracle on Saturday and Sunday.  A mom and her 9 year old son were baptized and those were the first baptisms in over a year in the Las Arenas branch.  We are so blessed!! And we were so excited!!! The mom and boy were so happy and she shared her testimony after the baptism and just simply said thank you for letting me be part of this great family. It was perfect!! And it doesn’t stop there.

My other miracle from the week is with the baptism that we have this week. It is a 9 year old boy from a menos activo family, that as of now I wouldn’t call menos activo. Through this process of the boy preparing to be baptized, they have reactivated and come to church every week for all 3 hours when before it was once a month for an hour.  Now their daughter is filling out mission papers. All this is happening because of the faith of this little 9 year old wanting to be baptized. What a miracle for the whole family!! We just had to light the fire under the dad and mom and now they are doing great!! So we have that baptism this week.

Transfers passed by...and we are staying together!!! We were so shocked!! We thought with all these new missionaries coming we were both toast!! But president left us together so that we could keep working here at the pace we are in Las Arenas. We are so stoked and excited!!! We are going to baptize the world this transfer and not waste a second of this transfer together.

Other exciting news is that my district got even bigger....there are 17 of us in it!!! This transfer is a little weird and the district will probably split next transfer but for now I have 17 members in my district....so many peeps to take care of!! But I am excited; we are going to have fun. 

O.K. hope college football is going good. Hope the cougs pull the upset this week at Texas. Love you all!! Win the day!

Elder Farah