Best Week Ever ..... Again! :D

Hola Padres y Amigos!     24 October 2011

Well this week has been an incredible, awesome week! It was one of the best ones of my whole mission. Since there is so much to cover with such little time to do so, I am sorry if I do not hit on the points or the questions that you have sent. There is a lot I want to say, so hopefully I will be able to cover it all.

We have been extremely blessed over this last week with so much to do. We have had so many spiritual lessons with our investigators and have really been about the Lord's work with all our heart, might, mind, and strength. We have been planning a lot more efficiently for our investigators and it continues to pay off. I have been feeling the Spirit guide me more and more every day. We also had Zone Conference this week. It was a good experience, but it was pretty strange for me. On the way down there we drove right by Hurricane and then we had to drive through the St. George area I was in to get to where it was. It was weird to think that I was on the complete opposite corner of the mission two weeks ago and now I am back down in the south. 

One of the crazy experiences that I had this week - Well one comes by way of a potential investigator named Carlos. We went to knock on Carlos' door around 8ish. He kindly invited us in, which is quite unusual for us to just have someone ask us to come in. We  got to talking and he said that he has some friends that are members and so we asked him what he liked about the Church. His answer was completely shocking. He said, "the baptism". He led into exactly what we do as missionaries. We had a really good talk about baptism and we have a return appointment for this week on Wednesday. We are looking to extending the baptismal invitation to him. We also had another random experience in the city of Enoch. We were going out there to try and contact a potential Native American to teach, but when we knocked the door, some guy started to speak Spanish to us. It is a pretty big shock when you are expecting to hear English and then you get Spanish. We went in and we taught Miguel the whole Restoration. He really enjoyed the outcome and the message. He is extremely excited to hear more about what we have to offer. He took a copy of the Book of Mormon and promised us to read it for himself.

The next story is probably one of the craziest, but one of the greatest from the week. We had received a referral for a lady named Sophia about two weeks ago. She lives with her granddaughter and her granddaughter's husband in a neighborhood that you wouldn’t really expect to go to teach the Gospel. The house she lives in, is probably one of the biggest and nicest houses that I have seen on my mission. We came back this week and we finally had a lesson with her. A little background on Sophia is that she is 80 years old and says that she is looking for a change in her life and was wondering if we could help her find that. We taught the whole Restoration to her and right after we said the First Vision in Spanish, you could just see her physically relax/melt. Afterward, these are the words that she said, "Oh how beautiful that God and Jesus Christ would come and answer that boy's prayer. Also that God loves us so much that He put His Church back on the earth." I was just completely amazed when she said that. It was so shocking and not what I was expecting. At the end of the lesson we extended the baptismal invitation and she accepted a date to be baptized for the 19 of November! It is just another tender mercy of the Lord that has been put into our path. I am just continually grateful for all that He has given me, especially the help here on my mission.

We finished off this week with a baptismal service. In that baptismal service, we had three baptisms. It was just the topper to the week. The three people that got baptized were from the same family that the mom shared the testimony with us. It has been amazing to see these three men/young men embark on this journey to eternal life. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to teach them and to see them make this step.

I am just so grateful for everything that I was able to see this week. It is just a great experience to be on a mission. I just want to thank everyone that has helped me to get here to this point. There are so many people to thank, but to just throw out a few: my parents, my Church leaders/teachers, Bishop Lott, and my seminary teacher, Sister Lott. I am grateful for all of these people. If I didn’t have these people and all the rest of the people that helped shape my life, I know that I would not be here today or be the person that I am. Always remember that what you do everyday may have a major impact on someone else’s life.

Live it, Love it, Preach it!    les agradezco y les amo!     ELDER D