May 23, 2011

May 23, 2011
Well… this is going by way to fast. It’s not fair that my mission is going away and I only have one shot to do this. Any way a pretty good week; we have some interesting things going on.
First is on Tuesday I had a conference with all the junior companions. President talked a lot and some pretty cool stuff. He is such a good speaker and so nice to listen to. One of the cool things is that I got to see the two guys that were in my district before in the MTC (Elder Calvert and Elder Fuller). Elder Calvert has put on about twenty pounds since he started the mission and I hadn’t seen him in about three or four months. It was way nice to see them again
Then later we had a few interesting things happen this week. One was we found a lady and we finally got to talk to her. Her name is Georgina. She right now is catholic but doesn’t go to church and was really interested in the Book of Mormon. I hope that she can really get into things. We found a couple of people who were temple workers who live nearby. Can you say member help =). We taught Georgina the Restoration and she seemed super interested in what we had to say.
Next is the guy Fray that I had mentioned a few other times. We finally found him again. He is really an interesting guy. He wondered how he could prove to himself that there is a God or things like that. But he prays and things like that so it’s kind of backwards. He however really wants help on reading the Book of Mormon. When we got on the topic he wondered if we could come by his house in the morning. He said something like this:
Fray: Yeah so I was wondering because I don’t understand this book as well as I’d like maybe you guys could come over in the mornings and I could take time out of my work. What time do you guys get up?
Elders: 6:30 but we have studies and things like that in the morning could we come by at about eleven?
Fray: Yeah that’d be great. We could start at eleven and finish around one or twelve thirty…..
He was super interested in us and he’s starting to make jokes which is pretty cool. We invited him to the baptism we had and he went, (cool statistic that President said. 90% of the people that go to baptisms end up getting baptized if they haven’t already been baptized). He said that he was going to go to church today but he didn’t go. We’ll have to go see what’s up but if he starts understanding the Book of Mormon will be a short trip to the baptismal font.
Another cool lady is a lady named Nora. She is also a teacher and we had a fun time getting to know her. One of the things that helped us get in with her is that I told her that my mom is a teacher (thanks for that by the way). We got talking and we had a super distracted lesson but she accepted a baptismal date. She also likes to read so if we can get her started with the book of Mormon things should be pretty easy.
We also have the lady named Leonor that we started teaching last week. We only got to meet with her one time this week, but we passed by and she said that she was in chapter seven of first Nephi (after having read the introduction and testimonies first). Now she is still reading, but she says that she’s only going to be able to have time to meet with us for once a week. We’ll see how that goes. But she’s doing a really good job at doing her homework and stuff like that.
The weather here is really really hot. Like the hottest it’s been. Friday it was 42 degrees Celsius (that’s like 110) with a lot of humidity. Fasting in this weather is super hard and it sucks the strength right out of you.
Oh yeah how can I forget the best part. The BAPTISM! It was on Saturday at four in the morning. It was good. We had quite a bit of people come. A lot of it was family of the two girls getting baptized so instead of trying to do one person the next goal is incomplete families =). The only problem is that we didn’t realize if the font was super full or not. There wasn’t as much water in the font as we thought. We both had to baptize twice. The first girl her foot came out and the second one her elbow didn’t go down. But there were juice and cookies afterwards. It’s all good though I’ll try to get some pictures next week. Well love you all
There was a cool thought that president shared with us in a few meetings. It was in reflection of Mosiah 2, 3, 4 about how much we are in need of a savior. I’ve also put together a couple scriptures (I call it the bomb) and it takes about 15 minutes but you go through a lot of emotions. Through these kind of experiences we really understand our need for help and how much we really don’t do. There was a story about a man who made his own company and grew rapidly and wealth. When he was going to a meeting his limo got hit by a truck and it killed him instantly. Getting up to the judgment bar he thought of his biggest achievement in life and he said, ¨I made the biggest fastest growing company in the world. And I did it all on my own without any help. I don’t owe anything to anyone I paid all my debts and actually a lot of people owed me money.¨ The Creator looked down on him and said, ¨I made thee.¨ We will never be able to make up our debts. But a cool quote that President Monson said, ¨To live a life of gratitude, is to touch heaven.¨ Lets not take things for granted the things that aren’t ours.
Well got to run. I miss hearing from a lot… well pretty much all of you. Excluding mom, dad, and Aunt Julie I refer you all to Alma 60:6 (and repentance). If I’m going to be sharing my experiences with you I want to hear yours too!
Con amor
Elder Mackay