Dear Mother of mine,,
This week was "pretty darn good!" Where do I start?
oh I know where to start. Thanny sent me an email! It was the size of a text, but "It was worth it!" Tell him that he´s rocking the running and that he can get under 16:20 the next time he goes to Mt. SAC.
This week we had a baptism. I wasn´t exactly expecting hermano J to be ready, but he was. I don´t know if I´ve told his whole story before. More than a year ago, he found the missionaries and asked them to come visit him. They did, and were visiting him for about two weeks, and one night he was on his motorcycle on the freeway and got in a terrible accident, and his legs were bassically destroyed. Rigth before he was taken to the Hospital, he layed there stairing at the Temple here in Monterrey. For about a year, he was recovering, in the hospital, in a wheelchair, going to physical therapy often and such. About two months ago, he came to church, and we got to know him there, and We started to visit him. He wanted to learn, and he loved to read. He´s not the typical investigator that I would expect, always asking semi-odd questions and taking his time in accepting and understanding gospel truths. I sometimes would be a little frustrated in lessons because sometimes he would start talking about some random subject that had absolutely nothing to do with the lesson. It did take quite a bit of effort and patience for me to teach him, although for my companion Elder R, and now Elder T, it´s not that much of a problem. I guess I have learned that people aren´t always going to learn the Gospel how you want them to, or aren´t going to understand it in the same form you will. He is a chef, and right now, being stuck in his house while he isn´t at therapy, makes super good empanadas de fresa which is basically sweet bread with pockets of strawberry. So his baptism was a bit of a hassle, or I would say. It was a little bit disorganized, and not very fluent. Jesús was baptized by two people, being that he didn´t really have much strength in his legs, and that he picked a member that´s 70 years old to baptize him. So there was another member in there to help him go under and lift him up. Goodness gracious it was a bit crazy, but above all that, He had made a covenant with God, and he had cleaned himself of all sin. I later focused on what was really important. He was happy that he could be baptized, even in his situation with his legs, and he felt the support of the members, so he had a good (birth)day. (It was his birthday too.) I remember earlier ago, asking the Lord if he could be miraculously healed so he could be baptized without a problem. I studied about it and prayed about it. Wouldn´t that be a great story to bring home? "Hey arise and walk!" like Peter...well the Lord said no, being much more wise than I could be. I read something in D&C about this that explained alot to me in
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| Baptism of J |
J´s case. D&C 42:51-52
51 The lame who hath faith to leap shall leap.
52 And they who have not faith to do these things, but believe in me, have power to become my sons ; and inasmuch as they break not my laws thou shalt bear their infirmities.
Maybe I lack the faith, or the humility, that he should leap, and possibly him as well. But there is still power to become one of the sons of God, and I remembered then a scripture in the Book of Mormon that explains how we become sons and daughters of God: Mosiah 5:7
7 And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.
We can see that the Lord can teach us things in many different ways. I learned that a miracle didn´t have to happen for jesús to be baptized, but that he could have faith sufficent enough to become a son of God without any of that. We´re going to keep helping him strengthen his testimony and progress. He will recieve the holy ghost and offically become a member of the Church this upcoming sunday, as well as hopefuly recieving the aaronic priesthood.
I don´t have that much time to tell you about all of the other things that have been happening, but remind me to tell you about Alexis next week. This week Elder Pieper of the Seventy and the Mexico presidency will be doing a mission tour, and we will have a capacitation with him on thursday, so that should be fun. Also, President McArthur gave us permission to go up Cerro de la silla next week, so we´ll see if we go (I hope so!)
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| Cascada! |
Any questions? It´s started to rain a bit and it´s getting cooler, which is nice. It rained super hard on saturday, and here all of the streets turn into rivers because they´re all slanted on the hill, we found a waterfall that day!
I love you all,
Elder Garner
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