Lesson learned: Warning

There are 3 spots in my mission that are famous for being poor and a little bit sketchy and I've now served in two of them, but honestly I've never felt safer. There's nothing to be scared of here. The people here are funny and brutally honest and they love heckling the missionaries, but they understand and respect us as representatives of Jesus Christ. Even the people that don't want anything to do with us know who we are and they don't want to mess with that.

So this week.

Yesterday there were changes and....... (drumroll)... We're both staying here! I'm actually really excited to stay and work with Elder C for 6 more weeks. He's super funny and we've developed a truly special chemistry in lessons. Every time we walk out of a home we feel as though we left them feeling better both temporally and spiritually. I've certainly had to learn some lessons with him, but it`s worth it to be patient with him because I'm loving being his companion. One characteristic about him that stands out is that he doesn't know how to talk in a normal voice, he yells EVERYTHING which makes his Spanish really really hard to understand but sometimes it just makes me laugh. 

One experience that stood out to me this week was when we passed by to visit a less active lady who attended church last week for the first time in a while. After a lot of waiting outside her door the lady finally came out the front door, but we could see her legs were shaking. It took her about 5 minutes to get from the front door to the gate (about 10 feet) and to unlock the gate. As she opened the gate it became obvious why. She was really really high on some powerful drugs. She couldn't talk, she couldn't walk, and she was shaking so much we had to support her to stand. The feeling there was something that hit my comp and I really hard. The feeling didn't really go away until the next day for me and my comp said he had a hard time sleeping that night. I think it's because we could see in that moment how powerful a presence Satan had taken in her life. Satan`s presence was so strong there that I will never in my life forget the feeling. I only share this experience to warn that 1. Satan is real and 2. It's worth everything in this world to stay as far away from him as possible. This young single mother of two probably never imagined she'd be in this position, but one small decision brought her further and further away from the light and into darkness. The drug she was on was a LOT stronger than Morphine. I know this is an extreme case, but any step in that direction is too far.

It really was a good week, but unfortunately the lesson learned was that of a warning.

Love, 

Elder Birrell