Success!

Hey,

Sorry I didn’t email yesterday.  With it being Memorial Day the libraries were closed.  Heads up, next week is transfers so the email will come on Wednesday.

Mom's question:

Do you still have two baptisms scheduled?  Not those two no.  M and F want to be baptized but first they need to attend church a minimum of three times and with both M working on Sunday and F going to the doctor for problems with his eyes and blood they weren’t able to come.  We are planning to meet with them again (hopefully tomorrow) and recommit them while driving home the importance of keeping the Sabbath day holy.

So we had incredible success this last week!  I normal have my journal with me while I email so I can remember all the details, but I forgot it today so I'll try my best.  We were given a referral out of the blue from elders in Logan this last week for a man (J) who had attended church twice and wanted to be baptized, and now he’s going to be baptized this coming weekend.  He lives about an hour and a half away in a town called Dennison and his wife has been an extremely devoted member for several years.  There’s no Spanish branch out there so they've been attending the English ward, attesting to their faithfulness and commitment.  He is the most golden investigator that Elder Samuel has ever seen.  We traded cars with the APs last Saturday (they have unlimited miles) and headed up there to teach in.  In less than an hour we taught him the plan of salvation, the word of wisdom, and the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The best part is that he really doesn’t have a problem with any of the commandments and a firm testimony and desire to be baptized.  I don’t even feel like we're doing anything at all, but that we're only the vessels and the means through which his dear wife's prayers can be answered.  Also, this is indeed a blessing for Elder Samuel because now he'll have one last baptism before finishing the mission next week.

Along with that we were blessed to attend the baptism of a family that we had once taught.  We had taught L and her two sons E and J (I believe I've mentioned them in the past) all the lessons and had spent over a month working with their family.  Unfortunately we had to hand them over to the APs (the English missionaries for their area) because E and J really don't understand Spanish.  However, the APs finished the job and Saturday they were baptized.  It was a beautiful ceremony and we even had two investigators attend, B and his sister Br.  They were once set with baptism but as the school year was finishing up they had no time to meet or attend church.  Though now they have plenty of free time and we're hoping to ultimately baptize their entire family.  We gave them a church tour after the service, and in th chapel we spoke to them about the Holy Ghost which they had been feeling and recommitted them for baptism at the end of June.  They're both excited for the concept, especially B, but we need to meet with them a couple times and again stress coming to church, reading, praying, and then enduring to the end. 

We've also found a woman, M, who shows a lot of potential.  We were given her as a referral from the other elders, and when we first met with her she had a triple combination already on her coffee table (that never happens).  She has been taught by missionaries before and shows interest in reading and receiving an answer from God as to the identity of his true church (something she hasn’t done within her catholic faith).

So trying to visit J all the way in Dennison is proving to be rather difficult, and when we were first able to coordinate a meeting, Elder Samuel went up to teach the first lesson and I stayed here with one of the Logan elders.  Holy cow was it tiring!  I felt like I was training a new missionary.  We ended up being together for a full day and a half due to complications with rides getting to Dennison for Elder Samuel, and the whole time I was doing 99% of the contacts and the majority of teaching.  Thankfully we met with some investigators who speak English, so that Elder Sanders could contribute, but the majority of the time I was on my own.  It was kinda fun to be pushed, and I felt like my Spanish was better because of the no safety net, but man was I exhausted.  We did tract into a man named M who let us in immediately and listened as I taught the first lesson.  I loved having that opportunity to be completely in charge of the lesson and have the confirmation that I can do this.  After the lesson we gave him a Book of Mormon and soft set him to baptism (meaning he'll get baptized if he feels this is the true church).  So that was fun, but I'm grateful days like that are few and far between.

So that’s about it for the huge accomplishments this week.  We've been having to bike and walk a ton since we're dangerously close to going over miles on our car (we're allotted 1200 a month), and we've even got bus passes that we've begun to use as well.  If we go over, depending on the severity, we'll lose the use of the car for a time. 

Love you all and hope to hear from you soon.  I'm itching to see the new bike so if some pics came in the mail soon that would be fantastic *cough *cough :)  talk to you next week.

Elder Harker