Specialized Spanish Training

We’ve moved to a new place; a room at the P family’s.  They are a sweet old couple.  They’ve been converts of almost two years now.  They’re both in the air force and they live on the lake.  It’s going to be really sweet to live there – living in the lap of luxury, it just screams “sisters” but we’ve got it for the moment.  We got a surprise when Elder Mickel’s aunt showed up.  She was going to Des Moines on business, so she dropped by and gave him some stuff and took us out to Skeeter’s for lunch.  She’s a really nice lady.  It was good to have the connection to family even though she wasn’t my own.  It was a cool experience.

We went to the specialized Spanish training in Omaha.  It was fantastic!  We got to see all the other Spaniards in the mission – there were a couple new faces that I hadn’t seen before.  We got caught up with old friends.  The entire meeting was in Spanish with the exception of President & Sister Weston’s comments and the AP’s.  Brother S was there and he gave a training on subjunctive which was Awesome.  He gave me a little booklet his youngest son A had made for me.  Apparently A keeps asking if Elder Harker is there or if Elder Harker is showing up.  So I wrote him a note and sent a member with the note and one of my name tags to give to A in return.  We had a great time there – got to pick up some supplies and mail and stuff which is good. 

I forgot to mention that a couple days ago I got Grandma’s package.  It had a bunch of Canadian food in it.  It was sweet!  I love Wunderbars, so it was good to get and all the health food.  Thank you Papa & Gram!

We were able to set E for baptism.  She had been raised Baptist and all that we’ve presented to her has really intrigued her and she’s finding answers to questions.  She did have the question of her baptism being valid because we kept coming back to priesthood authority.  That’s always been something difficult to teach.  While we were teaching I felt inspired to teach in a way that I hadn’t thought of or done before which worked out really well.  I explained it this way: pretend that there’s someone raised in a non-religious atmosphere and when they’re in their young adult years they find religion and say that religion is Catholicism.  They really want to sincerely establish a relationship with God and so they get baptized.  Did their baptism cleanse some of their sins?  No because it didn’t have the authority to do so.  Are they damned? No because God recognizes their sincere desire to be baptized and follow him.  If they don’t have the opportunity to receive proper baptism by authority in this life, they will in the life after.  She totally agreed and wanted to be baptized.  She was very excited for that!  We’ve taught her a lot and she has a lot of potential.  She still has to absorb it and remember it but I think she’s definitely going to be able to move forward and progress. 

Sunday was a snow day.  There’s been a blizzard and severe weather.  We went to church and had fast and testimony meeting and then everyone was dismissed to go home because of the roads.  There wasn’t too much snow but there were 24mph winds that were gusting at 45mph with a wind chill of 4 degrees.  It made driving pretty dangerous on top of the rain we had last night and it’s frozen on the roads.