Lorena to be Born Again‏

email dated 10/3/09
Today is General Conference. For me at 1:00 is the first session and at 3:00 Lorena Dacuña will be entering the waters of baptism. She finally made it and I think you all so much for your prayers in her behalf. She means a lot to me and I cant think of a better way to come to the end of my mission than baptizing Lorena. A perfect day!

This week I was doing divisions in Artigas 1 with Elder Rodriguez from Uruguay. We had a really good time. He is a really funny guy. He will work a lot of miracles in his mission. He is a very talented missionary. I was trying to figure out what made him so good and I came to the conclusion that it is because he loves the people. He is from Uruguay and so he learned quick to love the people. It was something he already knew how to do. He has only been out for 5 months but I can tell that he is a future leader not only in the mission but a future church leader in Uruguay. I was very impressed with him. Last night together, we taught the very best first lesson I can remember in all my mission. We had practiced tons of techniques and ideas to meet our missionary purpose. We know that our objective is to baptize and so we went in honest and sincere. We went up to a couple sitting on the front porch and asked if we could sit down and share a message with them for a few minutes. They said sure and so we did. Elder Rodriguez and I had been talking about this all afternoon and we finally got to try it out. We asked if they believed in God and that He was our father and they did. So he asked to start "If you knew that I had authority and power to baptize and that you could be forgiven of all past misdeeds, would you be baptized?" And the wife replied "Well, sure if I knew you had that kind of power." And then I came in and said "That is what we want to share with you today. That Jesus Christ came to teach us the path to Eternal Life, or in other words, the way to live happily ever after with Him and our families. Baptism is a step in that path and today we want to present you a message that will help you to understand how it is that the power and authority to baptize is on the earth today and that we have it in the Restored Church of Jesus Christ." We taught a 15 minute lesson in which we mainly focused on what baptism is and priesthood, and then we told the Joseph Smith story. We said "baptism" I think almost every other sentence. We spoke so positively and so full of faith that I don't think that it was possible for them to reject the message. I have always talked about how being positive and full of faith and sincere is the key and I saw it work last night. We said things all throughout the lesson like "And when you are baptized you will feel that remission of sins and the spirit and you will know that your Father in Heaven is proud of you." We talked to them as if they were already baptized. And my favorite was after they accepted the conditional invitation "When God makes you feel that this message is true will you be baptized?" They said "Sure." And so we said "Perfect!! I know you will want to feel prepared to make such a big decision, right? (nodding my head and they nodded back). Of course, and that is why we want to help you prepare so that when you are baptized you feel good about it. So when you go to church this weekend you will feel such and such, etc...And we will visit you frequently and pray with you to help you prepare." They accepted everything and answered questions, asked questions, participated in the lesson, etc.. Elder Rodriguez is going by on Sunday to accompany them to General Conference. I felt a fire within me! We were literally a fire. As we left that lesson we could hardly contain ourselves. We jumped up and down in the streets and talked about all the Preach My Gospel applications we had never noticed before. We smiled the whole way home.

I love you all very much! I am so happy that soon I will be with you again. I am nervous, but not scared. I hope that you don't recognize me at first. And then I hope you look into my eyes and realize that I am more me than I have ever been!

Andy