Committed to finishing strong

Hey Everyone - 

I hope you all had a great week.  Good week here.  Norma got baptized and was so happy!  

I've been working with a temporary companion from South America this past week.  He's a hard worker and we get along great.  He's had a hard life.  He shared some stories about his dad who apparently is the head of a huge drug cartel.  Crazy!

There are thousands of Haitian refugees here in Libertador so Jean-Baptist, a Haitian member, works with us when we are teaching Haitians.  The other day we stopped by Jean-Baptist's house and he had about 10 friends over.  I had a copy of the Book of Mormon in Creole so I stood up and started teaching them.  My Creole is starting to get good again!  

We had a surprise visitor – one of my former companions, Elder Perrett, and his family came to Chillan to visit.  It was really great to see him.  He FaceTimed with another former companion and friend, Elder Dawson, while he was here and it was great to seeand talk to him again too.  It made me get a little homesick but I got over it after he left.  

April 22 - 
Sorry I didn't send a letter last week.  Honestly, my body is tired.  At the end of each day I'm totally exhausted.  

Last week I got my new companion, Elder Contreras, from Santiago, Chile.  Since he already speaks Spanish, he was ready to go and work hard from the beginning.  We were off to a great start.   We had a good week.  We spent most of our time finding new people to work with.  Many of them seem to be progressing a ton.  

Alvaro is getting baptized Saturday.  He will be the last person I get to baptize on my mission because people have to come to church a couple of times before they can get baptized.  So, I won't see any results of all the work I do for the final 3 weeks of my mission.  I find myself working just as hard and I'm just as motivated anyway.  I’ve come to realize that I'm not working for myself or to take pictures or count how many people I've baptized.  I'm here because I'm converted to the work.  I came on a mission to serve the Lord and to save souls.  Even though I may never know what impact I might be having in helping the people to come unto Christ or improving their lives through service, I'm still working as hard as I can every day.  

Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

1 Timothy 4:12 

I love you all,

Elder Vincent

PS  We had lunch with the Hermosilla family the other day.  They love the missionaries and always make great lunches.  They often talk about this one missionary that set a record of eating 7 brownies at lunch.  When they told me Elder Dawson held the record, I knew 100% that I had to beat it.  I went into beast mode and ended up eating 8!