Enjoying the Mission
I don't know if anyone remembers, but when I was in the MTC I wrote about how I hated the huge, purple, acid tasting olives they have here, and about how they always hide them in the food so you don't know you are eating them until the taste already fills your mouth. Yes, those olives. Well noooooow my companion and I go through a packet every other week. They're so good.
So a few weeks ago we received a referral to visit a part member family, the only one who lacks baptism is the oldest son of 26 years. We have tried looking for him a ton but he is never home. But on Wednesday we were out in the street contacting with a huge cardboard Book of Mormon that we painted and we saw him walking his dog heading toward his house, so we thought THIS IS OUR CHANCE. We started walking with him and talking about soccer (it's the best break the ice subject here) when we got to his house he let us in and we taught him the Restoration. He had the Book of Mormon in his hand and he said he would read and pray to know if it was true, then he paused for a moment, looked up and said, "But you know what, I feel that it IS true." It was awesome.
Yesterday we were walking down the street singing hymns to people and we sang a hymn to a lady who was heading to work. She told us where her house was and she told us to go their right now because her son was there and he wanted to talk to us. So we went and a middle aged man let us in his house, he is a former investigator with church attendances. Right off the bat he told us that baptism was the way that we needed to follow Christ and he accepted a baptismal date without blinking. But we asked him what he felt he lacked in his life and he said the ability to make decisions. It seems like he was ready to be baptized beforehand but he lacked the will to make the decision. It was a real miracle finding him.
Saturday morning we were filling the baptismal font (there is nothing better than filling the baptismal font when you are a missionary) and we received a text message from the zone leaders saying President wants us all to move our schedule so that we can all be out working right now, the studies should be postponed until after lunch. And they promised us that we would have success by following these instructions. So we quickly finished filling and went to visit a recent convert. As we were walking we saw a guy standing on a street corner with a bunch of suitcases, so we went to talk with him. He addressed us as "Elderes" and told us that he had just barely arrived from Venezuela and was looking for an apartment. He also told us that his daughter had been baptized Mormon last week and that his wife and all his kids are members of the church. I asked him what he lacked to be member of the church and he said "I need to read more." We gave him our number and we are going to look for him to teach him once he gets settled in and finds work. It was a huge miracle and I know that it came by following President's inspiration.
Pictures: Baptism of the sisters in our district, they are from Venezuela. Drying the white clothes on our roof
Elder Harris
