BAPTISMS!!! (Mar. 18, 2024)

Hey everyone, I hope you're all doing great!! This was an amazing week with some incredible miracles! This was the last week of the transfer and Elder Biggs really wanted to end our time together with a bang! Anyways I'll try and give a little rundown of our week.

We started out the week with exchanges with the Elders in Constitución and I was able to go there with Elder Kosorok and had one of the best days I've ever had in my mission! We set some really big goals for the exchange and we're able to reach all of them! We were able to enjoy Chile, had some amazing views, ate some completos and enjoyed the culture, we were able to find a new family to teach, and we were able to put someone on date to be baptized! However we wanted to get someone on date to be baptized that same week, after working hard and praying all day to reach this goal, over a phone call at 10:20pm we put on of their friends on date to be baptized that same Sunday. The next morning at 7am I was able to give him his interview and yesterday he was baptized, it was incredible! 

Some highlights from our week here in San Javier is that we were able to have some really powerful lessons with our friends, especially those getting ready for their baptisms! We also found another part member family in Villa Alegre which has 4 kids who aren't baptized and all interested!! We also had to make an extra trip to Conti to get baptismal clothes for our friends, we spent a lot of time on busses this week! In our game night I had a little concert singing karaoke and had everyone going crazy, it was so much fun hahah!! However, the best part of the week was the baptsims yesterday!

So yesterday morning we went to the church nice and early to go and fill up the font, when we walked in the church we realized very quickly that something was wrong, there was broken glass all over the hall and doors were broken and lots of rooms had been broken into. I was pretty and freaky and really sad honestly. Anyways we just went ahead and started filling up the font and let the leaders know what happened, so all in the morning before church we had to have the police in the church and it was kinda a mess. I was super nervous that we weren't going to be able to have church or the baptisms, but it all ended up being just fine and Dylan, Renatta, and Mathilda were all baptized yesterday! It was a very special baptism and there were so many people there! The spirit was so strong and I was so happy to know that I was able to help these 2 families take very important steps towards being eternal families. Another great highlight from the baptism is a really good friend from Curico named Ruben cam and it was great to see him again and share some time with him!

A quick thought for this week that's been on my mind a lot lately is the importance of accepting God's will for us. He always puts us in places and circumstances to help us grow, these can be trials, opportunities, and many other things but his will is always that we progress and become more like him. His will is that we can love others more like he does. Understanding this has helped me a lot in not trying to ask God to adjust to my will to give me the answers that I want, rather that I ask him to help me understand his and how I can accept it in my life and learn from it. My testimony is that he loves us and he knows us individually, he will always be there for us and will help us as long as we seek him and allow him to. I love this gospel and I know that it's true and it's been restored. I am so grateful to be a missionary and that I get to share this great message every day here, I know I'll miss it a lot!

I love you all and would love to hear about all of the fun stuff y'all are up to! 

Elder Micheli