Caminando en Chiapas: A Magical experience of Christlike Love

This whole week was fun and interesting. We have been making plans to try to convince investigators to make the hour journey to San Cris from Teopisca. Every fast Sunday we meet with our rama up there instead of in our casa de oracion. If it's hard to get the members to go, imagine investigators!

It's not so much the distance..but because a round trip ticket for one person costs a minimum of about 65 pesos (that's like 4 bucks). When you work 12 hours a day in a cake store for 50 pesos.... well it's a lot of money that people here just don't have.

So we have one family that has come to church since the very first Sunday we got here. We found them while street contacting our second day here. La familia B. They really want to get baptized. We just have to get them married...which is a problem because they don't have their identifications or the birth certificate of their baby.

Anyway, they hardly even have enough money to buy diapers, let alone go to San Cris. Also, their baby has a hernia and is getting an operation this week. But they really wanted to go.. so we prayed really hard and decided that we would invite them to go with us... o sea... pay for them.

I know it was the right decision because what happened yesterday was absolutely magical. Seriously. We get there and testimony meeting was beautiful. The classes were beautiful. Everything was beautiful! I have never been so grateful for 3 hours of church, and classes that don't consist of reading every scripture from the index about the topic given. (Since the church is very new in Teopisca, it's kind of at an elementary school level.....going to San Cris was like entering college. It was wonderful!!)

And the members! A LA MECHA THESE TRISTE LOVING MEMBERS. Were amazing. A bunch of members immediately swarmed the B. family, asking them who they are, how they are, etc etc. When one sister found out they would be coming up on Tuesday for their baby's surgery, she gave them her direction and cell number. Then she offered her house up that they could stay in, and to cook them meals. IT WAS AMAZING.

After an amazing class of Prinicipos del evangelio given by Elder Crowely, (where one less active member I had just met gave me her earrings just because I told her I liked them), we met the branch president and asked if he could give their baby a blessing. After the blessing, they commented about her surgery, and asked if the church could voluntarily donate some money for their operation. I was super nervous, thinking for sure the President was gonna think they had just come to ask for money. But his response was the most Christlike response I could have hoped for, and really surprised me.

He said, "Of course." He even had his counselor pass around an envelope in Relief Society and Priesthood meeting for anyone who wanted to donate a peso or two for the surgery. In this short time, about 100 dollars were raised!!!

Afterwards, everyone was showering them with love and support as well. All of the sisters were so happy to have Hermanas in the ward, even if we are far away in Teopisca. It was a magical experience. I have never felt so much love so quickly from a ward! They were all so Christlike. And our B. family was very impressed.

When we visited them later that night El hermano told us that he had felt a warm feeling in his chest during the last class. It was so strong he almost cried. Later he told his wife, "This is where we are staying, honey. It's here with the Hermanitas."

And even better, they went to the DIF to ask for their new identifications, and they are going to ask for the birth certificate today! So we pretty much just need to raise the money to marry them!! They felt so much love and support. I will be forever grateful for this loving branch that made them (and us) feel so welcome.