We received the following email on August 5.
As missionaries you don´t really get approached by people that often. You talk to people all the time but you usually have to talk to them first and kinda prove to them that you´re a real person and not just some call marketer in the flesh. When you do get approached, however, you´re in for something interesting. It can be interesting in a few different ways. The first possibility is that it´s just some drunk/high guy on the street being himself. The second is that the person was somehow inspired to talk to you and you´re about to witness a miracle. The third is that your life is now in danger and you should find the nearest escape route as soon as possible.
Don´t worry mom the third one hasn´t happened to me I´ve just heard stories. But anyways yesterday we had an interesting experience, and in a way it touched on all three of those.
We were walking home from church and made it to our apartment complex. We were just about to cross the parking lot to walk into our apartment when someone calls out "Hermanos" really loud. We turn around to see who it is and there´s this guy in sunglasses and covered in tattoos, two liter beer bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other, walking towards us. The first thing he tells us is to not worry because he doesn´t have any guns on him. I probably wouldn´t have thought that if he didn´t say that but it´s cool I guess haha. So yeah he talked to us for a while and then asked us if he could feed us lunch. I was a little hesitant but I´m kinda always hesitant in spanish. Cifuentes was hungry cause we were just fasting and he didn´t seem too worried. So we walked into his apartment. The place was pretty beat up. Bear bottles, broken glass, cigarettes, several different types of drugs (some of which were pretty clearly homemade), and "wives" (yes, wives) were scattered everywhere. He sat us down, had one of the "wives" get us bottles of coke, some tacos, and a bottle of bear for himself. After we were settled, he proceeded to tell us his entire life story which was super sad, all about his rough family life and how he got himself addicted to pretty much everything you can get addicted to. He looked at us each directly and asked if we were happy. We said yes and then he asked us to teach him. We felt inspired to start on the gospel of Jesus Christ. when we got to repentance, he stopped us, asked us what it meant, and told us "That´s what I need."
So yeah now we´re teaching him which is cool. Also that family of 4 that was at church last week committed to being baptized which was super cool. They even wanted to fast with us yesterday even though we didn´t ask them to haha. But then on their way to church yesterday they got in a car crash so that was the worst. What the heck Satan. They´re all fine though and they still wanna come haha. They all have super strong testimonies and it´s pretty cool.
It´s really awesome to teach these people cause it really feels like I´m not doing anything but watching them turn their lives around through the gospel is super cool. Some of them are just regular people and some of them come from horrible backgrounds but the result is always the same. There really is nothing that you can´t overcome through Christ and his atonement.
I hope you all are doing great! Also sorry I forgot to take pictures because we´ve been super busy but I´ll definitely have some next week!
Elder Olivier
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