Elder Derick Marchant: I have a lot to talk about today :). And pictures! :) haha

I have a lot to talk about today :). And pictures! :) haha So gather ´round the computers, phones, and iPads. It´s story time!

So the first person I gotta talk about is Rosa. My first Sunday here, she came to church with a member and we got her information but we never really had time to visit her becaue we haven´t had work in the little town where she lives so we never went. On Elder Adcock´s first week here, I felt like we needed to stop by and visit her. We met her husband and here 3 little kids and they were just awesome. And we had an awesome first lesson with them. She talked about how much she believes in God because she used to be a crazy party person when she was younger but years ago her daughter had cancer in her leg and was told that she was going to die really soon and that they had to amputate the leg. Rosa prayed and prayed and said that she knew that God would save her daughter and she promised Heavenly Father that she would follow him forever and asked Him to please save here daughter. She came back the next day to the hospital and her daughter was totally fine. I was blown away by her faith. I knew that she was really special. They really wanted us to come back. So we set up a cita for the next week and went.

Last Tuesday we went to visit them again and we taught them about the Restoration. At the end of the lesson, Elder Adcock invited Rosa and her Husband to be baptized. He messed up a little bit on the Spanish so they didn´t understand so then I re-invited them but they still looked at us like they didn´t understand...so after a few too many seconds of awkward silence, I said ¨.....that was a question haha¨. She looked at me and said ¨I want to be baptized so bad.¨ And she told us a TON of things. She said that she has seen missionaries like us for a long time and something has always drawn her to us but she had never gotten the courage to talk to us. She said that she could just feel something different from us and she wanted to know what it was. For years she had that curiosity but never talked to us. Then a friend invited her to church when I got here. She came and saw us there and she could not believe that she had been invited to the Church that we were at. She still didn´t know how to talk to us but when Elder Letts and I walked up to her to talk she was super willing to give us her information. She had said at the lesson, ¨And now you guys are here and I love it all. I feel so happy, and so at peace when you guys are here and talk to us about this stuff.¨ She also said that for a long time she had people from other religions coming over but her husband never would stay and listen. He always left and didn´t want anything to do with them. But when we came he sat down with us and talked to us and read the scriptures with us and wanted to come to church. She said that just the fact that he was interested and also felt different was enough for her to know that we had something that no one else did.

She said, ¨If I had my way, I would get baptized tomorrow. But Gonzalo and I aren´t married. We have had problems with our papers here for a while and haven´t been able to get married. I know that that´s not okay in the eyes of God and that I can´t get baptized until we get married. But I´m gonna pray so that our last paper gets fixed so we can get married because I want to be baptized so bad.¨ We confirmed what she had said and said that we would be praying with them. The Spirit was just SUPER strong though. It was like the most crazy miracle lesson ever! She is SO prepared! We had another awesome lesson on Saturday but we didn´t have a ton of time so we just did a little fun lesson about faith for the kids but it was still so great and she talked more about how they had been waiting all day for us to come over and had been looking forward to it so much.

They came to church yesterday and loved it. We have another cita with them tonight :). Please pray for them so that they can get their situation fixed and get baptized! :) And think of someone YOU can invite to church. Maybe the same thing can happen! :)

Next thing, so ever since I got my trainer´s call, I have been super happy but part of me was dreading it a little. I had the attitude of ¨Well this will be fun but it kinda stinks because we have so much work right now and now I have to do it all by myself because he isn´t gonna know how to help me.¨ The last 2 weeks I have just had the attitude that I´m all by myself. And to be honest, apart from Rosa, everything was just going terribly. All the baptismal dates we had set have been all so busy that they haven´t let us in, so we couldn´t teach them and they didn´t come to church and almost all of them lost their dates. I was getting so frustrated and then write before one planning I just knelt down and said ¨Alright Heavenly Father, I can´t do this by myself anymore. I NEED you to guide me and tell me where to go. I´m not doing this how you need me to do this so I need YOU to help me out right now.¨ I asked him to put the names of the people we needed to visit in mine and Elder Adcock´s heads. When the prayer was over we wrote down all the names down on a Post-it that had come into our heads. Maria, Segundo, and Kevin were a few names. I had never met Maria because she was NEVER home so I was a little doubtful but we wrote her down at a time that we felt prompted to put. Then I called Segundo and he told me it was impossible to see him that day. We knew Kevin was going to be busy also. So I was pretty frustrated haha.

But we went to work. There was a HUGE delay in the road that made it impossible to find a place to park so we lost a TON of work time in the morning. We walked really fast to Maria´s house because we knew we were behind. We got there RIGHT as she was getting there. I was like ¨Wow, God really helped us out on that one. If we would have arrived earlier we would have left without seeing her.¨ Then we only had 30 minutes left to work, so I said ¨Hey man, if we can get 5 people´s information in 30 minutes we can go get a Kebab.¨ Then I prayed to know where to go. I felt like I was being led to weird roads but we were finding people that seemed really interested. Then I saw a guy from far away walking away from us and I felt ¨Contact him¨ so we caught up and I talked to him and guess what his name was.... Segundo. That is NOT a popular name. We got his info and we´ll be teaching him soon.

Then we had about 5 minutes left and I said one last prayer to know where to go. I remember that I literally saw the sign of a store in my head. It was far so I started walking REALLY fast. I couldn´t get the image of that store out of my head. When we got there, we were sweating and I was like, ¨Alright! Who do we need to contact!?¨ and there were only a ton of really old Spanish guys outside. I was like COME ON! haha. So I look down at my agenda to look at something and then I hear Elder Adcock yell ¨Hey Kevin!¨ and I look up and Kevin is walking toward us!

I could not believe that all that had happened. I could not believe that I could almost literally SEE the hand of the Lord that day. I learned a REALLY important lesson: I am NEVER alone in this work. It´s not my work. It is HIS. And I need to trust HIM. Not myself. He had been waiting for me to lay down my pride and put my trust in Him. And then He guided us to exactly where we needed to be. I will never put my trust in myself again without first depending on the Lord. Not a single name that we had seen in our heads had failed us that day. It is a day of the mission that I will never forget and it definitely has become a huge turning point in the mission as well.

Well, It´s been a long email. But I just wanted to share my testimony with you guys that I KNOW that this Gospel is true and has been restored in its fulness and is found in this Church. I know that Heavenly Father knows his children and loves them and is trying to get all of them home. He is always with us and he will never leave us hanging if we will only put our trust in Him.

I love you guys. Have a great week :)

Elder Marchant

Molina!