Received April 26, 2010
Dear Family and Friends,
I hope that you all had an amazing week! Way to go Mckay on graduating from BYU.
That is so awesome! I hope that you had a great day doing so! It was also great to hear that Jenny was able to finally make it home safe and sound! Sounds like it was quite the adventure. But I am glad that you were able to make it home.
It was also crazy to hear that Jason Harris had to wait for a while to get home from his mission. It doesn't seem right that it is the time for all of those elders will to be coming home in the next few weeks. It seems like they just left yesterday how crazy is that! Keep me updated on the calls of Jonny and Preston! Way to go guys! I am happy to hear that we are going to get two more solid warriors in God's Army. Maybe both of you will be lucky enough to get called to the BEST MISSION ON EARTH -- Puerto Rico, San Juan. Keep your fingers crossed!
Well this week was just great. I hope that it was all good for you guys too. Once again, I thank you for all of your letters and your love. I just love hearing from you guys.
We had Zone Conference this week. it was originally scheduled to be held here in
Curacao. We were going to have 8 elders in our apartment again. But the conference
was moved to another island and a different day. Wednesday morning Elder Wilkes and I
woke up early early so we could get to the airport to and catch our 7 o' clock flight to Aruba. We got there without a problem. It was really weird to be in Aruba again. But I loved it. We got picked up at the airport and we drove straight to the church where we had an amazing zone conference. There were just the 8 of us missionaries and the Mission President and his wife. After the meetings we drove right back to the airport. Zone conference ended up getting out really late and we got to the airport like 40 minutes before our flight. It was like home alone with missionaries! (hahah) It was fun though and we were blessed to get there right at the time that we needed to. We then flew back to Curacao. When we arrived we took the Mission President and his wife to their hotel. We went up to their room to help them unload some stuff. It was really weird to be in a hotel room. That is something that I never thought I would see in my mission. But none the less it was cool. So yeah, that was our day. We got back at about 4:00 and went out to work! It was crazy but a really cool experience. We flew to Aruba and back in one day! We thought about doing it again for preparation day. No . . . I'm just kidding! That would be fun though!
Anyways, that was a cool story for the week. But now I will give you an update on our
investigators.
The Petrona family is doing just great. We had a little trouble this week with the other family. Jose's sister had some troubles at home and ended up going into a panic attack. She stopped eating for the entire week and didn't recognize who we were or anyone in her family. She just recognized our voices. It was really a strange phenomenon. On Saturday we were able to give her a blessing with the Branch President. She woke up on Sunday morning back to normal! It was quite the miracle. It was also just another testimony to me about how true priesthood power really is.
But like I said, the Petrona family is doing just great. Jose is an absolute rock and is reading the Book of Mormon every single day. He has completely turned his life around and all he wants is the best for his family. So he is really excited for his baptism and the baptism of his family. We were able to meet with Monica and Claris alone this week which is something that we have been trying to do for a long time. Jose is a rock, but we were feeling that Monica and Claris were having some doubts. We went by on Wednesday afternoon to talk to them. It turns out that Claris had started to fully read and pray about the Book of Mormon and she was loving every word. But Monica told us that she was little worried about being so old. She was worried that she would start to fall behind as the others kept learning. She expressed some other fears. As she was talking I just heard this voice in my head "Fear Not, only Believe." Then I thought about it one more time and it hit me. That is from the Bible. I didn't know exactly where it was but I opened the Bible to look for the scripture and I found it within seconds. That is something that rarely happens to me when I am looking for scriptures (hahah). I started to talk and all of these words just started coming out of my mouth. I was saying really bold things that I don't usually share with people and then I shared the scripture in Mark 5:36. (As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe). I told her to put her name in the scripture in place of the ruler of the synagogue (also something that I don't usually do) and I was completely floored by the effect that it had on her. She lifted up her head and she said "that's it! That's exactly what I have to do! I can't fear. I have to believe."
I was so thankful that I was able to have that experience. I know that, without a doubt, it was the spirit teaching her. I knew that was the exact scripture that she needed to hear at that very moment and it was so amazing to be able to just be taken away and have to words just start to flow. It was amazing and it's just an amazing blessing to be able to have experiences like this every single day.
We found a great new investigator this week. She is actually from a reference we received from another member! (Member references rock!) It turns out that her son played in the Little League World Series. I have come to find that this is the goal of every little kid here in Curacao. As for her . . . she is so awesome. The member who gave us the reference doesn't even know her that well. The member worked with her a little bit at the doctor's office. She said that she has been hearing a lot about our church lately and that she thinks God is trying to tell her something. We gave her a Book of Mormon and talked about how her family can be together forever. She loved the message and was really excited to get going! We are really excited to follow up with her this week to see how everything went!
Well I have to get going. We have to go wait in line at the DMV to get the car registered. You know how long that takes in America. Imagine how long it takes in a place like Curacao (joy and rapture, hahah). But at least we can do it on our preparation day and not have to worry about it another day.
I love you guys. Thank you so much for your love and support. I will try and attach a
picture! I hope you enjoy it!
This is from my birthday with two members, Annie who is from Jamaica, and Sherman who is from Curacao! Happy 20th!
I love you all! Have a great week!
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