Letter 2/4/13

Well it was another fantastic week here on the battlefront. The best event was Diego's baptism! I might have even surprised you guys....I'm not sure if I've spoken much about Diego. He lives in Afogados (which comes out to mean "drowned" in English.....haha) which is a ward in our zone that is closed to missionaries. Until the mission sticks a companionship there, we are responsible to take care of the investigators that live there. There was a 22 year old man named Diego who had visited the ward there when his girlfriend who is a member. He liked church a lot. We taught him in about 4 visits to his house. He accepted everything that we taught to him....the word of wisdom, chastity, tithing, without the slightest resistance. He actually had a lot of questions and doubts as to whether or not he would be able to live these commandments, but we testified to him that he would be greatly blessed for obeying these eternal principles. From that point on, everything we taught him accepted and put into practice. At times, I forget how difficult it must be to make such radical changes in your life so quickly. As members of the church, we think of it as we think of the commandments and Gospel principles as teachings that are so obvious. It's usually something very foregin and unusual to someone who is not a member. I have so much respect for the faith shown my people like Diego. I personally think that I would cause such a big headache to the missionaries if I were to be taught by them. It really is a demonstration of true faith. Diego asked me to baptized him. He said that I'm the first American that he can call a "real friend". He's an awesome guy. I'm really excited for the journey that he's starting right now. 

We had another cool experience.  Several months ago, I felt inspired to make a contact with a man on the street. It turns out that he is an inactive member who has some real drinking problems. We saw him last week and asked him to indicate a few people that we could visit. Not understanding very well that we wanted to meet his nonmember friends, he took us to the house of one of his other inactive friends Issac. With time, I realized that all this was part of the Lord's plan. So this man named Issac said that had a dream the night before. He dreamed that he was inside the church and that he saw another member of the church there welcoming him in (it's funny, because this member that he dreamed of is full out albino....maybe he confused him with me!). He said that he felt so good inside, that he woke up with an immense desire to return to church. Not even 12 hours later, we showed up at his door. We had a very interesting chat with them. We called them to repent and come back to church (i'm going to miss spiritual moments like this). The Spirit was certainly with us. He promised us that he would be at church next week. He even showed up at a baptismal meeting we had! It's amazing to see how the Lord coordinates these things.

We are busy at work to try and find more people to baptize. It's great to look at the fruits of your work, but if you stop and look for too long, you run the risk of forgetting to plant the seeds for the next season's harvest! Ana paid her tithing for the 1st time this week. She was THRILLED to be able to pay real tithing for the first time in her life. It's amazingggg to see the light and change in these peoples' lives. I feel bad that you folks back at home can't see these things. Carnaval (or the festival of the "flesh" as my mission president likes to call it) starts this week. I hope I'll survive this week without being kissed, squeezed, abducted, or anything of that nature. The Enemy is busy at work this time of year. We got step it up too!

Until next time,

-Elder McKinley