Another great week!

I need to do a little catch up.  Sorry I didn't do an email last week.  These past two weeks have been crazy but it has been a good kind of crazy. 

We had a baptism for Faith, a wonderful sister last Saturday and what a great day it was for her. There was a lot of craziness beforehand but it all worked out and she did get baptized.  Her mom gave the talk on the Holy Ghost and they have been less active for a long time so it was a big deal that she was giving a talk, she was really nervous about it.  She did such a good job, probably the best talk I have heard on the holy ghost.  She got really emotional.  She said something a long these lines "Faith I am so proud of you, I know we all say this a lot but you really do live up to your name, it is because of you and your desire to get baptized that we are back at church, I am so sorry I forgot how it felt, the gospel really does bless families and I know it will continue to bless ours". My companion, Sister Traini, and I were crying so much.  This family has come such a long way since we first started teaching them.  They want to start preparing to enter the temple to be sealed together as a family. 

We had a really great district training meeting.  My companion and I were in charge of the training and the theme for this month for our mission is "Making use of our time and making it more effective", we talked a lot about diligence and accountability in our training.  In Preach my Gospel it says that we need to be accountable our entire mission not just at the end of the mission, when we are set apart to be a representative of Jesus Christ we are accountable to the Lord.  We want to end our mission knowing that we were fully committed to the Lord and that we were accountable.  We ended our training listening to a song that was very fitting.  It is called "The hardest thing I have ever loved to do".  It talks a lot about the mission and just how we spend our time.  We told our district to reflect on their mission so far as they listen to this song.  One thing that I really liked that the song says is "the most sincere prayer I ever prayed, I thank my God each and every day".  The song starts with beginning the mission and saying goodbye to your families and all the other struggles that come from the mission that we deal with and then it ends with saying "the hardest thing I have ever had to do was getting on this plane and coming home to you".  Our whole district was crying by the end of the song, we all got very emotional.  The time that we have on the mission is so precious, we don't want to mess up that time.  We want to fully be committed to the Lord.  We closed with a scripture in Alma 36:24-25.  We invited our district to give an account to the Lord on our mission so far.  The spirit was so strong in that meeting, I know it was something our district really needed and they needed to feel that spirit again.  The spirit was not at our district meeting last week due to some things but this really helped our district come together and to be more unified.

We have been teaching a lot of people.  We have had a lot of work to do which has been great.  We are getting the wards more involved with helping with missionary work.  We have gotten a lot of referrals.  We have some really great investigators that could get on date for baptism soon. 

I want to give a shoutout to my niece Virginia, who is getting baptized this Saturday! I wish I could be there but know that I will be there in spirit.  I am so proud of the decision that you are making.  You are following the example of your Savior, Jesus Christ.  I will be thinking of you on Saturday. 

I love you all!

Love,
Hermana Veronica Garces