Elder Derick Marchant: Teaching a lesson with President Deere!

We had the great opportunity to teach a lesson with President Deere this week! My second time and boy was it great! I never remember what I have told you guys ever but we have an investigator named Nicolas and he is the brother of the Stake President in Sevilla. We´ve been teaching him for about a month and he´s super great! We challenged him to be baptized last week and he accepted but didn´t accept a date. Well I had been talking to President Deere about him because he is good friends with the Stake President in Sevilla. And President Deere asked me if he could come to a lesson with us. Well we had one of the most spiritual lessons ever! We read 1 Nephi 3 when they´ve gotta ¨go and do´ and they go get the plates and fail the first 2 times. Well we explained a lot and talked a lot and the President Deere shared about how he was called to be a mission president. He had been a lawyer and had a great practice and everything was going great and then Elder Oaks called him one day and asked him to come up to his office, asked him to be a mission president here. He talked about having to leave everything behind, take his kids with him, he was the only one who spoke spanish. He has to start all over when he gets home again. Then he said ¨that´s how all this applies to me. I have done what the Lord has asked me to do because I love him and am so grateful for all he´s done for me. Now, Nicolas...how does this apply to you?¨¨ I LOVED that question! The spirit was super strong and we talked with Nicolas more about everything and talked about baptism again. He said that he is pretty scared and that he still wants to read but he knows that all of this is true and WILL be baptized when he feels ready. I learned so much from President Deere! He is so great!

Me and my comp are struggling a little bit. He is very ready to go home and I´m getting to the point in my mission where I just have so much desire to work hard and baptize. I´m getting pretty frustrated and losing my patience. I always thought that I would be able to handle anyone but my patience is being tried this week.

We write President Deere every week and he very rarely replies to us but this week he wrote me an email and just said ¨Thanks for letting me come to the lesson with you.¨ Then he sent me another one that said ¨ Elder Marchant, By the way, you are a super missionary. I was so pleased that your Spanish is so developed. Of course I am not surprised at how committed you are, I could see that from Day 1. Also thank you for giving such a good experience to Elder Rodriguez.¨ It was just a little note but it was exactly what I needed to hear today. I just feel sometimes that he doesn´t see that I am a good missionary because of the numbers we report and our obedience report every week. It´s never high because...well it´s a companionship deal. And I sometimes worry that President doesn´t see what kind of missionary I am. and I´ve really been struggling with my comp. So I was just very happy to get that email from him. Glad to know that he knows that I´m doing my best.

Everything is going good. Pretty stressed out. But I have good friends in the mission that I can talk to when I need and it was good to get emails from people. Missions are rough! But they really are rewarding.

Love you guys and hope you all have a great week!

Elder Marchant

Photos:

Lorenzo wore a white shirt and tie this week to church!! Usually wears this weird pink shirt hahaha!