Week 70 - Quito - Conferencias y Confirmaciones

We had two awesome conferences this week! The first we had was with President Murphy for our Christmas conference. It was so great as I was able to see my two trainees there as well! We had some great fun and got to sing the "worldly" christmas songs (i.e. Jingle Bells and Santa Claus is coming to Town). Of course, Elder Ellington (my second trainee) accompanied us on ukelele. It was super fun trying to remember those songs. We also had a christmas devotional with our stake, once again with President Murphy. It went really well! My companion and I sang with our ward and I got to play "Peace in Christ" on the piano as accompaniment for the missionaries. It was so powerful as we took time to remember the reason why we celebrate Christmas.

We also were super happy for the confirmation we had in the ward this last Sunday! Alexandra Carranza had kind of a rough start. She had received the missionaries about a year ago and even passed her interview for her baptism. However, one thing led to another and she decided to not get baptized at that time. Then my companion got here a while later and saw many teaching records just tossed on the ground. One of those teaching records was hers. When I finally came, we went to visit her. She was still having a slow start. We knew everything that had happened before and we decided to be very direct with her to see if she really wanted to be baptized. The day we wanted to set up a date is when the Elders from the coast came to join us. So I wasn't without my companion but we had a great companionship study and off we went. We came and decided to share Mosiah 18: 8-10 that discusses the covenant we make at baptism and what is stopping her from being baptized. As she began reading, she began crying. We asked her if she would get baptized the 15th of December and she said, "Yeah. Let's do this." Both my companion and I felt that the Spirit truly guided that lesson. And how greatful we are for that because now she is confirmed and is preparing to enter the temple and be sealed with her kids that are already members of the church.  

As you can see, it was a super busy week. But we had a super fun week and very spiritual. I hope you can have a great week as you #LightYourFamily! I know I will but it'll be just a week after :). Love you all!