For of such is the kingdom of God

I'm gonna tell you guys a story about how the gospel can change peoples lives.

About 3 weeks ago one of the recent converts in our ward brought a friend to church, his name was francisco, this was at general conference, our friend francisco was smoking about 20 cigarrettes a day and had just hit drugs before walking into the church. We saw however that he had a lot of desires to change his life. As he came to church every week, we taught him about the power of prayer, he felt unworthy to ask God for anything. Well on tuesday of this week we got a text from Francisco, saying he had just prayed and received a powerful confirmation that he needed to get baptized on sunday. He decided to drop everything right then and there and got baptized yesterday! In my last 21 months, never have I seen such a big change in someone in my whole life, i know that the gospel changes lives!

But we got a serious problem, well its not really a problem, our teaching pool is like 80 percent little kids, its so funny. Like its whack, these kids be pulling up to church on their own without their parents, they just pull up in gangs. They pull up to the activities and everything. We had one friend named tiziano who was coming to church for a month straight ALONE, well he comes with hie cousin whos a member, straight dawg, he was tryin to get baptized, then the day before his baptism his mom was like nah, it was kind of an L but hey what can you do

But we got 9 people to church, well actually 13, but 4 of them arent married so its a little bit of a longer process. So we have a ton of work to do here in May, lot of people to progress to get ready for baptism. The time goes by like no other in my area, we are basically just flying around from point to point, the work has never been more fun! Vamo Romero

Thats all i got today

Love yall!

Zion

This ward is ridiculous its actually insane. My mission is going to end in like 2 seconds what is even happening

So I officially said goodye to Altos, literally almost cried, just so many amazing people that I met there, the recent converts there were just absolute gold, and dont even get me started on the members, there are all amazing!

But like I said in the title I made it to Zion! This ward is ridiculous, they feed us like crazy, we have around 30 ACTIVE converts, like that is a number unheard of! Never have I seen a ward share the gospel so much in my life, people just bring people to church, like im not even kidding you, going to an activity or to church is just the easiest finding source. And this is the first ward ive ever been in where we had to open the back part and set up chairs, i think we had something like 140 people at church yesterday👀

So basically I get there, and my comp is just like, yo this lady has been coming to church and she just seperated from her boyfriend, and up until this point my comp had never even met her, we pass by her on thursday challenge her to get baptized on sunday, and she accepts and got baptized, jaja it was a crazy miracle!

My comp is from Spain, his name is Elder Murillo and I just love this guy. Hes just like a ball of energy, its so funny. Only my 3rd spanish speaking comp in my whole mission but hes awesome!

Im loving the ward, I kid you not we spent a whole 5 minutes in the street this week, we just pass by recent converts and everyone just lets us in their house and invites friends over, its like a missionaries dream, but high expectations in this ward so we gotta live up to it, lots of work to get done this week so lets get ittttt

This Easter was probably the Easter where I learned the most about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I really made it a goal to increase my understanding of the atonement of Jesus Christ. I love the Savior and im grateful for this sacrifice! I know because of him everything wrong in this life will be made right in the next

#BecauseOfHim

Love yall!

I'm No Good At Goodbyes

This week was probably one of the most stressful weeks of my life but hey, you know what they say, pressure builds diamonds.  

This week we were able to help our friends Stella and her little daughter Sofia get baptized. Stella has quite the tough life, she came to Saturday and Sunday morning of general conference, we did her baptism interview on Wednesday, everything chill right? Sike Saturday night 8:30 we get that text ive seen many times from stella "were not getting baptized peace", ya ive heard that before, my comp looks at me hes like what do we do im like "vamoss", so we dropped what we were doing and turns out the little girl was just afraid of drowning so it was a quite little fix and they were all set. They even got baptized in ice cold water it was fire.

We also helped our boy Jose get baptized. Hes the cousin of our boy Gustavo who we baptized in february. We found him the last day of last transfer and baptized him the last day of this transfer. He's probably the biggest troll ive ever met, and his cousin got the priesthood and baptized him it was so hype!

But news came in and my time in Altos De San Lorenzo has come to an end. I'm outta her on Wednesday, and oh my im gonna miss this place so much. Never have i come to love members like i love the members here. The people in this ward are just incredible and the amount of people that were humble enough to listen to us was amazing! I just love this place!

But im heading close by, its a ward called Romero, from what Ive heard its like the most cracked ward of all time. Apparently its one of the highest baptizing wards in the world and apparently the members over there are just studs! So no pressure, but theres always something weird about heading into your last area, and my comp is from Spain so that's sick.

In other news, me and my comp woke up this morning and ran 13.5 miles so that was kinda hype. We started the transfer saying that our last pday together we would crank out a half marathon so that was lit

Love ya'll!

True Discipleship

Something I've learned during my time as a missionary is that being a disciple requires a lot of sacrifices. I've learned that as a missionary a lot of times we need to sacrifice things that we WANT to help others receive the things they NEED

Yesterday, we were sitting in the chapel with some of the members and some of the friends we brought to watch general conference. As I was watching, to my left was a single mom (recently baptized) and she brought 3 kids, all under the age of 8, now trust me, i know what its like to watch general conference as a kid, they began to run around the chapel like crazy and were making a lot of noise. I remember just sitting there for 30 minutes and just watching this mom struggle to keep her kids quiet while she tried to watch general conference. I sat there and received a strong impression that I needed to help this women out, so thankfully, Elder Clouse came mad prepared for a situation like this.... with his Bluey coloring book and his colored pencils, So I remember grabbing 2 pages out of the coloring book and laying down next to the kids and for the next hour just started coloring in my coloring book with them and it seemed to have worked! They were quiet and happy for the rest of the conference!

Then While I was laying down coloring with them, I looked over at this mom and little girl we had brought to church, and the little girl (whos about 10 years old) look BORED haha, trust me I know how it is, so I decided to leave the 3 kids coloring, and decided to play some tik tak toe and some dots (shoutout dad for teaching me) with her for the rest of the conference and it seemed to have cheered her up! She left conference with a big smile and everything!

I don't share these stories to boast of myself, but these stories really taught me a lot about discipleship. I could have just sat there and in my head thought "why doesn't this mom take her kids outside", because im not gonna lie that thought crossed my mind, but I realized this mom NEEDED the words in general conference, so even though I wasn't able to focus as much as I would have liked, the mom was, and nothing made me happier then seeing her just be calm and able to watch conference.

All of us receive spiritual impressions often, some of us wait to act on them (like me), others act immediately, and some of us ignore the prompting to begin with, I learned this general conference weekend the importance of sacrifices and acting on spiritual promptings

Also that family of 3 that came to church last week totally just used us for money big L's, but we got 9 people to church so that was hype

Love yall!