P-du Miracles

email 2/16/09
So I had a fun humbling experience last week with Elder Ericson. Lets all remember the movie the Best Two Years and the super excited and enthusiastic greenie played by Kirby. Anyway, that is my companion. I cant think of a better analogy. Anyway, remember in the movie when the greenie says all excitedly "he took down our number and said he would call!!" And all the seasoned missionaries are just like "oh too bad. Better luck next time." And then the guy actually does call while they are all praying and it is a funny scene in the movie.

Okay, so we were having a hard time finding someone who was actually interested in learning about the gospel. Elder Ericson had apparently been praying in his personal prayers that somebody would come up to us who was interested. The day after his prayer we were out proselyting and a man screamed "HELLO" in English and I figured it was some teenagers making fun of us like they always try to do. He grabs my sleeve and says "Elder, there is a guy who wants to talk to us" and we see this man who was at work across the street give us the wait signal with his hand. We wait and he crosses and begins trying to speak in English, but doesn’t actually speak English, and then gives up and speaks Spanish. Anyway, I ask the man if he wanted to learn some more English, "how bout we come by your house some time and we will give you an English class" and he said no. He asked if we had a pamphlet or something to give him and so I handed him the address to the church pamphlet that I had in my back pocket. He said "okay, I will go to your church on Sunday." I said "Okay great. How bout we come by before Sunday so we can share with you a little bit about what you will see on Sunday in church." He again said he didn’t want to give us his address. End of contact.

We keep walking and my companion slaps me in the back all excited "YES!!! I was praying so hard that someone who was interested would come to us!! YES!!" Not wanting to put down his excitement I just said "yeah, that’s cool. It will be cool when he goes to church." But inside I knew that he was just another contact. I figured he just wanted to have fun with the gringos and try speaking English like a lot of people do. I didn’t think much of it. But all week my companion was so excited about the man. "At least this Sunday we will have that guy in church, and we can baptize him in 3 weeks right? They only have to go 3 times right?" I never told him that I figured we would never see the man again. In my experience we were never going to see the man again.

Lo and behold, Sunday morning as I am about to start the Gospel Fundamentals class our friend Angel Dilongo comes walking in. My companion who had expected his arrival runs up to him "GOOD MORNING!! Come in, come in!" I hope my mouth wasn’t wide open as I shook his hand and asked him to sit down. He was the only person there for class beside a recent convert woman. (we have a really small ward of about 20 active). So I announced the class "today we will be talking about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." And we just taught him the first lesson there in our chapel during church. He seemed decently well versed in the bible, had some golden questions and opinions: "my parents are catholic. I just don’t understand why they pray to the Saints and the Virgin. Shouldn’t we only pray to God?" It was too good to be true. Wanting to continue in our string of miracles I decided we should just be bold: "Will you be baptized?" He replies, "Does that take a long time? When can I get baptized?". We still have a lot to teach him, but we set up to teach him on Tuesday. He really liked church.

So that is my fun story of the greenie magic. Pretty cool eh? He recognized that that man approaching us was the answer to his sincere prayer.

Anyway, that is my fun story for the week. It has been rainy and when it rains here it floods the streets. It comes down so fast and so hard. We have been pretty wet but we are doing well. Life is good. I didn’t even notice that Valentine’s Day was last week until today when my friend Elder McClellan called and told me he had a Valentine’s package. That means therefore that I am a dedicated missionary because I didn’t even think about the romantic holiday. It didn’t once cross my mind. You all have my permission to be proud of me.

Lacey Wells wrote me and said she is getting married. Another one bites the dust. She was a winner too. A linguist and a friend since we were little kids. So many things will be so different when I go home. The Dear John that I am most afraid of would be one from Peter Christiansen or John Nudd. That would devastate me. If any of you ever see them tell them to stay single long enough to go on a fishing trip with me when I get home. That is all I ask.

Anyway, I must be going. I hope everyone is well and happy. Don’t forget to have faith. Faith and positivity really does make this world move. Make our world move in a good direction. Take care. Love y'all!!

Andy