His name is Elder Brown, and I'd send a picture if I could..... Next week.
Anyways, he is a really, really amazing missionary and is really teaching me a lot every single day. We work really hard and are really, really obedient. We're also tall, which can be fun sometimes, especially when there are always little kids in the streets who will ALWAYS say stuff to us. For example, just the other day, a whole bunch of them were playing in the street, and we walk by at missionary pace (FAST) and they all turn and shout after us "Why are you guys so TALL?"
Stuff like that happens.
In any case, things are really progressing well here. We had a lesson with Sofía last night, and I wasn't really sure what to talk about in the lesson. We'd made plans, but on the way to it, I commented that I just felt like what we'd planned wasn't right, so we decided to just let the Spirit guide, and what we found was simply miraculous.
Sofía has really struggled to find desires to be baptized and she simply hasn't felt that she's been solidly answered as to whether or not all of this is true. Here strong formation holds her back, and she's NEVER once attended another church, not even considered it. But, now she must decide. Her daughter Lucero is one year away from taking the first steps toward growing up a Catholic or a Mormon, and this is a really crucial time in Sofía's life as well, so the pressure is on even without us.
Well, we began to discuss how she's felt in church and in reading the Book of Mormon, and we just found that she's been comparing religions more than anything, and she wants to know more about how a Mormon is in daily life. So, we talked about where the knowledge really comes from, as we almost always do, but then we did something very different.
Eldre Brown extended an invitation to be baptized on the 1st of February, which isn't all that strange, but it was the way he did it, and where we took it from there. You see, we normally extend that invitation with a lot of caution and almost apologetically saying "if you find a response by then," repeatedly. This time, we didn't ask her to pray for a response, because she has it. This time, we asked her to pray to have desires and to be strong enough to be baptized. Elder Brown read the story of Peter walking out on the water and talked about having the faith to abandon our safety and going to to meet Christ, and then I read about King Benjamin's people and their mighty change of heart, and how they acheived changing their desires. We didn't invite her to know, we invited her to act upon what she knows. And then something truly amazing happened.
She accepted.
Without hesitation or doubt. She accepted to prepare herself to be baptized February 1st.
In all of this, we have to recognize the Lord's hand. These were not our words, not our actions, not our books of scripture or even explanations. We relied wholly upon the prophets of old and the Holy Spirit, and because of the mercy of God and the power of His Spirit, her heart is already changing, and she will be baptized.
I testify of God's love for all of you, and I want you to know He is looking out for each of you individually.
Also, thanks everyone for the responses to my last email! I got a good laugh out of some of them, but thank you all. I don't have much time today, so I won't actually be able to write any more or get out any personal emails this week, but I'll probably be doing fewer personal emails in the future and putting more effort into the communal ones. There's a lot more life and work going on here than I've let you guys know about!! So, look forward to some things in the coming weeks, and maybe a few short responses if I have time. :)
I love you all.
May God be with you all.
Elder Harris
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