Here in Costa Rica Easter doesn't really exist, but semana santa does! It's celebrating the same thing (the resurrection of Jesus Christ) but they don't have the Easter bunny. Instead they spend the whole week celebrating (mainly taking a week off work and school and going to the beach). Because practically everyone didn't have school or work, EVERYONE left Santo Domingo and went on vacation to the beach or something like that. It was DEAD! The buses basically weren't running and the only businesses that were open were the bakeries. It was super weird and made working a little bit hard this week, but all is well.
Also, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were the most important days (the 3 day period were Jesus Christ died, and then was resurrected). On Friday, there were a bunch of people walking in the street in some sort of parade with people in costumes and statues of Jesus and Mary and stuff like that with a band. They were walking really slow and taking up the whole street so we just had to watch and wait for it to pass before we could cross. It was funny because everyone was looking at us (missionaries) really weird and wondering why we were there.
But apart from it being Semana Santa, this week was a little discouraging/sad as well because of our investigators. Olman, Johanna, Rachel, y Maybellyn (the family we have been teaching since February) don't appear to be progressing as much lately and we aren't quite sure what to do with them. They have EVERYTHING but just haven't made the decision to get baptized yet. Also, Eduardo y Yara (investigators that we've been teaching for about a month) came to church for their 3rd time this Sunday! Eduardo is the one who we knew was going to be a little complicated for him to get baptized but we still hadn't explained to him why. We decided to let him know in private at church on Sunday. But, while we were talking about some of the requirements that one needs to get baptized (make covenants with God) he let us know that him and Yara aren't actually married... Yara was pretty much our only hope for a baptism this month and so when I heard that... It was a little rough to say the least. Every time that we asked them before, they said that they were married, but a lot of people here say that even if they aren't. To get baptized, you cannot be living with your significant other unless you are married. Marriage is ordained of God! We hope that they will get married, but because of the situation that Eduardo has, it would be very complicated for them to get married... But we aren't losing faith! To lighten the mood, we had an AWESOME experience this week while teaching them about prayer! Yara is super great and likes the church a lot, but still didn't feel that she had received her answer about it yet. We spent the whole lesson teaching them about prayer and then we invited Yara to say the closing prayer to the lesson... I don't think I've ever felt the Spirit stronger in any other prayer than my own before in my life. When she finished praying, she just kept her head in her hands and was clearly emotional/crying. We asked her how she felt and she just said she felt strange and didn't know how to describe it. I KNOW this church is true! If that wasn't an answer to a prayer, I don't know what is.
Which leads me to my spiritual thought this week. I believe I shared this in my email about general conference but I´d like to reemphasize it. Gary E. Stevenson, one of the 12 apostles, spoke the gift of the Holy Ghost and how it has 3 functions: warns us of danger, comforts us, and testifies of truth. Thankfully I wasn't in danger this week, but I can testify that I witnessed the 2 other functions of the Holy Ghost this week. We may not have the best of days, but the Holy Ghost is always there to offer us comfort and peace when we ask and plead for it. I also KNOW that the Holy Ghost testified to Yara about the truth of this church and this gospel. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ may not be in our presence right now, but because of that, they have given us the Holy Ghost so that we can be guided and lead back to them.
I love you all and hope everyone has a great week this week!!
Elder Smith
P.s. Sorry I didn't take many pics this week :(
Pics: we made pupusas as a zone last pday, the view from my apartment
No comments:
Post a Comment