Right now, I feel like an obscure
metaphor, so bear with me:
I'm not sure if you remember the
part in the movie Toy Story 2 where the gang (consisting of
Hamm, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky and a Brainwashed Buzz Lightyear) has all reached
the apartment building where Woody is being held. After climbing through the
ventilation system, they reach the elevator shaft, which Buzz begins to climb
the wall with magnets and his companions dangling in tow. Using his
"Anti-Gravity Turbo" he decides to let go of the wall where, for pure
happenstance, the Elevator is rising only a few feet below and lifts them to
the penthouse apartment.
Under the illusion that his gadgets
and boosters are the reason for their ascent, Buzz Lightyear extends one hand
towards the heavens and shouts, "To Infinity and beyond."
And in a weird way...I feel a
little bit like that.
Mainly because Elder Prestwich and
I are seeing so many fruits and so much progress up this elevator shaft of an
area, like we're rocketing up at light speed....when really the Lord is who has
been lifting us up so high, and that he is working more miracles here than I
ever could.
...So it's like that, if you catch
my drift.
What really made me feel that way
were the two incredible families that we have been teaching.
We found them on the 14th of this
month, knocking on doors by our house in Zone 8, following our new philosophy
of "look until you find someone." We taught a quick
lesson that day to Minor and his wife, Veronica a relatively young family with
two little kids, Steve and Brittany (those are some super American
names [another side note: "Super" is also an acceptable adjective in
Spanish...so if I keep saying that word a lot....it's not my fault]). We taught
for a little bit about the Restoration and the first vision and they seemed
rather receptive. Setting up for an appointment the next Tuesday, we both left
the lesson feeling surprised about how great the visit really had been.
During the next appointment, we had
our socks knocked off.
They had read all of the pamphlet
that we had left with them, and had discussed it as a family, how "it made
so much sense that there was an apostasy" and they basically repeated the
story of how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon back to us.
Simply....appalling...you don't
find people like them every day.
We invited them to be baptized on
the 13th of September, and they accepted.
On Sunday, they came to church on
their own and left their kids in the Primary as they went to the Gospel
Principles class. They said that they loved how focused on the family our
church is, and that the idea of being able to be sealed in the Temple for time
and all eternity was a new goal that they had.
I mean...really?!? I don't even
feel like I'm doing anything, that the spirit of the Lord is working so hard
through them that nobody can even stop to count the blessings.
They already gave us a referral,
Veronica’s sister, Erika and her three kids; and wouldn’t you know it, they too
are completely golden. One of the children’s names is Bryan, he’s a 20 year old
college student that seems to have a much higher spiritual scale than most
people.
He told us in the 2nd
visit that he had “read half of the yellow book” that we had left with him.
“You mean the one about the restoration?” I responded, thinking that he was
talking about the Lesson 1 pamphlet.
“No, it’s a different one…what’s it
called again? I think its Gospel Principles or something like that.”
Our jaws both hit the floor. The
day before he had sat down for three hours and studied the basic doctrine of
the church…and he could repeat it back to us like an answering machine.
Then, a little bit later in the
lesson, we talked about eternal families, and Minor said, “It feels good to
know that God has a plan for my family….I really want us to be together
forever…like what Buzz Lightyear says ‘Al Infinito….y mas Alía!’”
The member who came with us,
Hermano Castro, told us after the lesson, “They were so well prepared…it was
like teaching members!”
And he was right.
So even though August was a little
bit slow…September is going to be a fantastic month, with 7 baptisms on the
schedule.
Among other exciting events, we
also had a member of the 70, Elder Kevin R. Duncan, come and do a Zone
Conference with us on Tuesday. I learned a lot about how to work more
efficiently and how I need to have more faith to find new investigators.
He said that it is possible that we
could all have 40 progressing investigators in one week.
And I was all like…whoa; I only
have like, 7 and am struggling to maintain all of their spiritual flames, now
imagine 40.
Yikes.
But for the moment we’re doing
great, we got to go and play “Spike Ball” with our Mission President in Don
Justo this morning…even though I was terrible at it I had a lot of fun!
Hooray for P-Day.
Love you all and I’ll talk to you
later!
No comments:
Post a Comment