Yessinia went to church

Hola Familia, 

What an  Amazing week!

Brothers and Dad,

The kitchen looks phenomenal by the way! Best of luck in Minersville. I want to tell you how my greatest hobby is to share the restoration! So fun!  

Emma

Best of luck with girls camp! Best of luck with babysitting! So proud who you are!

Mom

Thank you so much for moving the date for my talk! I LOVE YOU. I know that it is hard because you have so much going on.

Everyone that was an amazing fireside from President Nelson! Follow the Prophet!

Area

This last past week I was listening to President's Nelson's talk about the power of Jesus Christ. He retells the story of the woman with the issue of Blood. He helps us understand that we must as well stretch ourselves spiritually so that Jesus knows that our greatest desire to to find his power for our lives. In the first moments of meeting a new person, or in the first moments of a teaching appointment we shared that our purpose is to help them receive the power of Jesus Christ so that they can be able to help their families even more and that Christ may heal them. It has been amazing.

One day Elder Lowry and I were rejected a couple times in a row by people who were fearful of us notwhistanding our love, confidence, and calm demenor. To those who seem hesitant and fearful in talking with us we have decided to start by saying...

" Hello as you can tell we are missionaries for Jesus Christ, My name is Elder Rigby and this is my good friend Elder Lowry. We need your help! We have left our homes to share what has brought us great joy and we want to share it with everyone! Some of the people we have talked to this week have been hesitant to talk to us.  What can we do to help people feel more comfortable talking to us? 

This question/approach has brought great success and has "disarmed" many people who either 1.) don't feel comfortable about talking to religion or 2.)feel that we are there to replace all their belifs 3.) feel that we are there to correct them(sometimes we find those that are drinking). We have had many great experiences with people and have been able to receive permission to come back to homes that wouldn't have received us before.

These two 2 new ideas have helped tremendously.

I contribute them to my heed to President Nelson's counsel to stretch further out spiritually to find personal revelation. God truly wants to talk with us.

Yesenia

She came to church!!! Thanks to the great lesson we had last week with the Pimentels,the virtual church tour, continuous messenger contact, and the priesthood blessing she recieved on Sunday she had the strength and determination to get her 3 kids(valeria 4, Kiko 7, and Gaby 10) ready for church. She noticed how she felt after her priesthood blessing she felt as if a weight went off her shoulders. She has received opposition from her family. When she told her mom she was going to be late to her father's b-day, her mom got upset with her. Nevertheless, she stood strong and came to church. She said she felt very peacful. So many people said hi to her. Her son Kiko loved the singing and her little girl valeria was nice and reverent. Gaby, the ten year old, wasn't too excited but we'll help her get there. 

While Elder Lowry was talking to Yesenia I was able to talk more to Gabby and get to know her. She is a very kind girl with a great heart! I'm excited to teach her this week. Yesenia is going to try to change her work schedule this will make it easier for member present lessons and for us to teach her kids. This is going to be an amazing week and with continued fellowship she will be baptized before the end of June.

Jose Luis

Thanks to Elder Lowry's tech abilities and the mercies of the Lord, We were able to download the Book of Mormon so that Jose could listen to the book. however, he did not listen to it. We had a great lesson with him this past week where we showed him the restoration video with our families. He really enjoyed it. He expressed how he has fallen away to God because he has let work dominate his time but he is going to work on it. Jose just needs continued fellowship from our good friend Jorge Alvarez.

Edenia Urenda

She came back from Mexico this past week. We had an amazing lesson speaking about how she can receive more power from Jesus Christ. We read from the Book of Mormon to help her feel the great spirit of the book. Our conversation was led to how her children are not baptized. We read parts of Moroni 8. It was a powerful lesson! She understands that she needs to repent. We asked her what she can do to come closer to Christ. We invited her to church and focused on how she can help her boys. She wants to come to church but she knows that she has to start waking up earlier. She asked us to start calling her at 6:30. A funny request but that is where we are at! She is feeling the spirit and ready to take bounds!

Alma Carmona

Hma. Bautista invited us to go teach her friend and her 2 daughters. I have to say it was difficult because we had to switch languages. It was frustrating because we felt that we didn't quite get to her needs. To be honest president, I went over on my time on the computer printing out emails from the past so I can save them for the future. It's hard sometimes to determine what is the path I should take when I'm faced with 2 of God's desires. I should have trusted God's rules in the past and it has brought the spirit. The lack of the spirit in this lesson can be contributed to my lack of obedience. great learning experience. Hma. Bautista is working with her and Alma's daughters have great potential!

Maricela

We visited the single Mom Maricela one day and we asked her about how her Book of Mormon reading was going. She expressed how she is confused what the Book of Mormon is. We established an appointment later that day and Hmo. Flores and his amazing cousin came with us. His cousin, Ingrid, is a dentist from Peru who has come here to study English. Ingrid shined as she helped her understand what the Book of Mormon is and invited her to Church. We shared parts of the Restoration video again with our phones. It was amazing to have this tool. Ingrid did a great job inviting Maricela to come  to church. It seems that she may just not be ready to fully "stretch out" and come to church.

Julio

He has been taught on and off by missionaries these last couple months. This time we were able to get our good friend Hmo. Francisco to the lesson. He shared powerful testimony and invited him to read for himself and study. It has been frustrating because even though Julio does great a reading, he is hesitant in coming to church. I'm not sure what to do. God knows we'll ask him.

Griselda

We got in with Griselda, her sons Gabriel 6, arturo 9, Abel 11, Jesus 14, and her husband Jesus. What a great time! The boys were struggling to pay attention, and they had a crazy little puppy but we were able to kneel down with them and all the boys prayed. The father, who was initially a little more hesitant, kneeled as well. The spirit testified of the truthfulness of our message. Elder Lowry did a great job on establishing a relationship with the father. 

Luis Ceja

God led us to a great father. Missionaries in the past served him while he was working and he is open and ready to learn. We are very excited.

Carmelita

We were searching for a former that didn't have an address and we found her yesterday. Carmelita is a mother in her 50's that has Cancer that has spread to her cancer. She knows she is dying but she tries to keep it hidden from her 14 and 16 year old daughers(others already moved out). Her pure love that she demonstrates for her family amidst her great pain is amazing. Because of the many doctor appointments she has she chose not to set up return appointments but we got her facebook and are going to help her feel the joy of our message through short inspiring messages

Hermana Sumano

Claudia Salazar

We found an amazing less active mom that came to the United States and then fell away due to the resistance of her sister. She has a great family. We will be working with her.

This past week we spent a lot of time in the trailer park, North of the Fred Meyer on the 40th, that you gave us a few months ago. Because missionaries haven't spent a lot of time there we have tracted it out once and now we are focused on squeezing every last drop out of this lemmon in order to unsure no one is missed. It is going well and we are finding referals for the english sisters.

Companionship

This past week we addressed our daily plannings. Elder Lowry has struggled with daily plannings in the past because of his dislike of the mornings. this has lead me to take all of it and turn it into a Elder Rigby planning. This has been a great error of mine. I haven't tried to, but  I just get very excited when starting a new day! Elder Lowry expressed his frustration how he feels that I don't value his opinion and I voiced how I'd seen a lack of desire. We decided that I would sit back every planning and let him take the lead. It has worked very well.

We also addressed how I go about correction/suggestions. In the past I have used a timid voice. I have been timid because he has had struggles on taking little corrections so I have been scared to correct him. We discovered that my timid tone causes a negative reaction to him. I felt God calling me to not to be timid. This has helped me tremendously. I love Elder Lowry and he has helped me to see that it is ok to leave the mission. I have felt that God has been slowly cutting my heart from the WYM and I have been fighting it. He helps me understand that it is simple as a transition from Rugby to Football.

District

We had an amazing district meeting this last week where we made some actions to fuel the amazing branch we have here in Englewood. These people are so willing to help. We have to feed the beast! I hope you get what I'm saying! We have all made strides to send out thank you messages and truly help the members how great they are and how much we love them. We are going to have an activity this week where we heart attack their doors. I am making little short motivation videos to get them pumped up and have helped them establish small basic goals personally and as a companionship to help us help the people be baptized in June and July(Goals 4-June and 10-July

Myself

God helped me understand this past week that I need to dig more into the power the Book of Mormon offers and how we truly need the message it contains living in the last days, the importance to communicate with out fear and also a great last principle. 

I felt the holy spirt tell me yesterday that the reason my knee is not getting better is because I'm still afraid to not have a consitant road to of continuous improvement. I feel, and ecspeaccially with exercies, If I don't do better each day then I am a failure. I felt the spirt tell me that I must dig more deep into what repentance means. As I understand the grand oportunity of endless second chances that are found on the way to repentance I will become fearless and God will see that I am ready to run again.

My mission  is an amazing experiences. I am so grateful.

Love,

Elder Rigby