The Hottest And Coldest Days In The Same Week!

Hi friends!

I hope you are all doing great!  This week, I melted!!! 

I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but I've been teaching a youth named Roni, and this week he was baptized!!! 

To be honest, I'm not sure how I should present this week to you guys, I think I'll just mention some interesting points this week with some interesting details!

To start off:  This week was the Holy Week, that means that we had: the hottest day of the year! and: no one to teach (because of vacays to the beach)

But seriously though, this week was HOT.  On Tuesday it got to 106°F, with the temp feeling like 113°F.  I was so happy when a rainstorm passed by on Wednesday, leaving Thursday at a nice, chilly 77°F.  I think that's the coldest I've felt here in San Pedro Sula! It was luxurious.

Now, this week we taught, interviewed, and baptized Roni. It was an amazing experience, and he was ready for it.  He's been helping us share the gospel too! We've been able to teach lessons to his friends and sister with him actively participating.  They have lots of questions, and I'm excited to see what will happen!

One experience I particularly enjoyed was when we were with the sister of Roni.  We started off by chatting about the violin she has.  As it turns out, my comp played the violin when he was 10 years old.  After chatting about the violin we transitioned to the gospel, and she was interested in how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints works.  We talked about the prophets and revelation, and I mentioned that when I pray I recieve revelation from God through His Holy Spirit.  She then asked me if I was a prophet, and I clarified, that for me, revelation was personal, and not for the world, as is the sort of revelation the prophets recieve.  My companion, then chimed in that she could recieve her own personal revelation from God when she prays, and the look on her face showed wonder and surprise!  

She must not have known or realized that God could talk with her, and not just to the person down the street who claims to be a prophet.  That look of wonder that appears when we teach doesn't appear often, but when it does, it's sweet to experience.  I hope she knelt down to pray that night and asked for answers to her questions, like we invited.

We invited a ton of people to go to the baptism of Roni, but with so many people on vacation, relatively few showed up.

This week for me has been all about baptism.  From scripture studies talking about baptism to zone meetings talking about baptism, to literal baptisms, this was a good week!  We've set the goal to invite everyone we're teaching to be baptized. We've invited many, and we've only recieved the answer "We'll think about it", that drives me crazy.

Another thing that has driven me crazy is a certain Elder from the San Pedro Sula EAST mission. Last week we recieved a reference, and spent 30 minutes wandering across town trying to find him, only to discover that he lived about 2.5 miles away in the East mission.  We sent a reference to the appropriate area and went on our way.  

Two days later, we discover the same person in OUR reference list.  We called him again to confirm that he was, in fact interested with meeting with the missionaries (he was, he even read to us the introduction page to a Book of Mormon he recieved), and then we asked for more details about where he lived.  We confirmed that we sent the reference to the right area and to the right missionary, and sent the reference again with more details.

The next day the same man (his name is Juan) was in our reference list AGAIN.  We took a peak at his interaction history with the missionaries, and discovered that the missionary assigned to that area has NEVER contacted Juan.  He has never 1) Sent a message, 2) Made a phone call, 3) Passed by the address we sent.  Basically, this person wants to hear the message of the gospel, and this missionary DOESN'T want to share it!

You won't believe how annoyed I am at this missionary.  Juan sounds like such a nice guy, and he sounds super interested in learning more about the Book of Mormon, but I cannot visit him to teach him because he lives far outside my area and mission!  I WANT to teach him, but I'm not the one who can teach him, I mean, while we can send text messages and make phone calls to teach him, we can't help him progress beyond that point. The ones who can help him progess more are where he lives, and they WON'T even send him a message.

I know that there are likely things going on that I don't know about, possible differences in rules, habits, maybe even situations.  Maybe there's a missionary assigned there, but is centered too far away to visit and teach Juan.  But believe me, if I find out that that missionary never contacted Juan because his address has Brisas in the title (Brisas del Carmen, not Brisas del Expocentro where I am), I will be so mad at this missionary!

Thanks for letting me fume.  In reality, I just want the best for Juan, and the reason I'm annoyed is because he's not getting the help he needs - help I cannot give. We discovered that we had the number of this missionary already logged on our phone as "East mission secretary", so maybe it's just that the missionary is super busy with secretary work, but I find that reason hard to excuse not making a 5 min phone call to see if an interested person is in your area or not.

Outside of a few annoyances, I really enjoyed this week.

We had interviews on Friday and they were fun!  We got to go to the home of the mission president for those interviews, and I was asked to play the opening him for the training and interviews!  One interesting experience from that was that after my interview I went to the bathroom, and when I stepped out I was called on to practice teaching in a role-playing situation.  I was given 10 seconds to read the prompt (a very complicated situation) and then 3 seconds to prepare a scripture.  Basically, I had no time to realized what was going on before I had to teach a lesson. In the end, it ended up going well, and the APs complimented me, saying that my face really showed likely emotions that would happen during that kind of circumstance (no kidding!).

I had the blessing of being able to present to Sister McClellan photos of the mural we made, and she was so surprised! I loved the smile on her face when she looked at those photos.

Anyways, I'm just about out of time for today, so please enjoy your week!  If you need a study prompt for this next week, I recommend you study the covenants made at baptism, and what they mean to you.  Please, write down your thoughts somewhere. They can be useful later.

Also, I thought the new BOM video on Jacob 5 was pretty cool, and the Master of the Vineyard has quite the smolder  (look out Dwayne the Rock Johnson)

I also took a look at my family history and discovered that one of my ancestors was Brigham Young's personal barber, and that my Great Grandfather became a Stake Patriarch.  It's cool learning about your family, you never know what you'll find!

Anyways, see ya!

- Élder Grant