An Exciting Sunday!

More blurbs from David this week....

"So some pretty awesome things happened recently. Saturday was the baptism of Casey. She had been taught for several years, and had been going to church enough that the first missionaries had thought she was a member already. Elder Macdonald, my companion, was super stressed out about it because he had to talk about baptism and also confirm her. She wanted the confirmation that day because her family was there. But the whole thing went well. Mike, a less active member who's been struggling with smoking, was there and he said it was the first baptism he'd ever cried at. He had been a part of teaching Casey so he felt really close to the event."

"We went tracting [knocking on doors in neighborhoods] about a week ago around a street near some railroad tracks. We didn't have too much success, and as we were about to leave we saw a house across the tracks with a ton of cars at it. We thought we might as well try it. We knocked on it and a man from Mexico named Angel answered the door. He's been struggling with a bad case of vertigo and also with being laid off from his job. We told him a little about our church, and while we were talking, one of his daugters came out to talk a bit with us. Her name is Sonja and she's 20. They both were really friendly, and we told them we'd stop by again a little later.

"We did on Thursday. As it happened, the whole family was home at the time. There was Angel, his wife Melissa, and their five daugthers, Sonja (20), Crystal (19), Miranda and Marissa (15, twins), and Thalia (13). They all came out and we were talking for about two hours on their doorstep because they just liked to talk. They even gave us some frozen fruit and sodas. We'd only met with them once before! We handed out three English copies of the Book of Mormon and one Spanish for Angel. We answered a couple questions they had about us and they seememd pretty interested. They hadn't been too into church before, but they'd attended some Pentecostal congregations and kind of like those. We told them where our building was and finally broke away, thinking we'd be able to follow up with them a bit next week.

"About half an hour before the baptism, though, Sonja called us. She asked what time church was, and confirmed where the building was, and said that the whole family was planning on going! It was crazy! Elder Macdonald got even more stressed because we had also known of three other possible investigators coming the next day. I was just excited, because you all know that I just don't get stressed. But now we had potentially ten investigators coming to church the next day, maybe more.

"Sure enough, the family showed up. Angel wasn't with them because his vertigo was acting up, but Melissa and the five daugters were there. We sat with them during sacrament meeting, then took them to Gospel Principles. We taught the lesson, about Faith and Repentance. It went very well, especially because there were plenty of members also there who shared their insights. Two other investigators were there as well, brought by another member.

"After the class, one of the investigators brought by the member came up to me. She told me that something I had said during the lesson had been exactly what she had needed to hear that day. I felt really good about that, because I hadn't really planned on saying a whole lot during the lesson. I know that the Spirit worked through me, and that even when we don't know about it, we'll be saying what people need to hear all the time."