Elder Hale: two missions, one God

 We have a friend that has plans to get baptized next Sunday. Jairo came to the institute today and was really outgoing. We were busy with the tires so we got there late. He made friends with everyone, and a couple different people came up and told us that he was golden. On Sunday he came to Elder's Quorum and near the end of a somewhat dry lesson he piped up and said that he had something that he'd like to share. He came to the front and asked each person the reason for why they come to church. He summarized it all and talked a bit. In the end he made us all really excited to be a brotherhood of individuality in christ. This is the first time he's come to church in person and he's already so willing to give.  We have another friend of ours that was planning on being baptized next week, that decided that he wanted a break from us ;(. He believes that God has all power and exists, but he doesn't believe that God can save him. He's so disheartened by that that he ...

Someone that we met this week was named Miguel. The gate was closed on the apartment complex! We got a feeling we should wait for a couple minutes and surely someone came out and opened the gate for us so we could knock on his door. He was really nice, and opened right up to us, telling us that he really has been in search of truth and is so confused by all the doctrines and teachings of the world... We testified boldly that the way he is going to have something that he can trust, is by learning how to receive personal revelation. We are excited to see each other again.  We started off the lesson with Bryan by saying, "you've talked to Elders in the past, so I'm sure that you know that we like to talk a lot. Today is going to be different because we want to hear about you in order to know how best to help you." He opened up to us, and even told us some stuff that he's never told anyone else in his family. I'm so glad we stopped and listened. Bryan is very soft...

Miracle! We were contacting people on the way home yesterday, and we had a feeling that we should contact this one person that recently had been referred to us... but that we should wait ten minutes. Weird. Anyways, we decided to wait before going over even though we had nothing to do, and when we got there the lights were dark and on top of that there was a big fence and an aggressive dog in between us and the house. Right as we were going to leave & delete the referral record, someone pulled in that actually lived there and went in to get the person for us. Her mom and dad came out and they are excited to learn from us. The mom and dad especially want the family to come to church and the mom asked us for some stuff to read between now and the next time we pass by. Then an angel came down and - sike. Ok, but all but the part about the angel really happened. We're gonna have to pass them off to a family ward though because we're only in charge of teaching people in the ysa ...

This week I shall give you a couple highlights from this week and and the week previous. I was moved over to a spanish young single adult ward last week, and my new companion is named Elder Paulino! He's being trained and his spanish is way better than mine. Highlights: Someone we met this week has some addictions in the past and feels bad because he has less time without the addictions than other people. I cut him off and told him that him counting the days was making him feel bad; he's already been forgiven each time he repents and there's no magical amount of days that will tell someone that they’ve been forgiven by God. we shared Mosiah 26: 30 and he was so deeply touched by it that even though he had never read the Book of Mormon before he asked to have Elder Paulino's copy and immediately started highlighting that verse. He looked so relieved and there was a great spirit of peace that rested over us. It felt so good to teach with power and authority in order to he...