It is ridiculously dificult to send pictures here. I realize that have failed miserably and continue to fail in sending picutres, but know thaat I put in a good effort every Monday.
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| Sevilla 1 |
So I have a cool story about real missionary work and stuff. I would have shared earlier, but it is kind of delicate and I wasn't really sure where this was going to lead.
We have an investigator whose name is Pedro. The story goes that when Pedro was a baby he had a bunch of weird sicknesses like polio and stuff and at three months old he went into a coma-like thing. He stayed in said coma for eight years. He was in a vegetable state. Then nurses who didn't really know what they were doing (imagine medical care 60 years ago in europe, I shudder) put him in a bath and turned on the hot water. The water reached almost boiling temperatures and severely burned young Pedro. And Miracle of all miracles, Pedro screamed for the first time in years. Well fast forward Pedro is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life and is entirely unable to touch large quantities of water without going into epileptic fits, but otherwise has very little problems later on in life. He becomes a psychologist, gets married, has two sons: all is good. Until He runs in to the mormon missionaries - Now this is about 25 years ago. The missionaries continue to teach him off and on for years and he goes to church pretty regularly. Only problem, he can't get baptized without touching the water.
So I get here and he is our only investigator and naturally his story fascinates me. But the more I teach him the more I kind of doubt that he has an actual testimony. Like, I knew he liked the church, but I didn't really think he knew it was true and kind of doubted that he really would get baptized if he could. So we decided to put him to an ultimatem: he gets baptized or we stop teaching him. I realize that probably sounds bad without all the details and the missionary aadvise of being bold and dropping investigators who don't progress. But we felt like it was time. We asked him if he believed that this was the true church. He said yes. If Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Yes. If he believed in miracles. Yes. If he would be baptised. And he agreed. April 25th. We were shocked. And then we terrifiedly promised him that if he would put is full effort in that God would open up a way for him to be baptized. Then for the next few weeks we very solemnly prepared Pedro to enter the waters of baptism.
We re-taught him all the lessons, we talked him through the interview. He set up appointments to meet with doctors to find out what the worse that could happen would be . He assumed death, but he wanted to know for sure. Okay, insane I know. But honestly I was surprised it was going so far. So we decided to call President. He discussed it with us and advised us to proceed with caution, and to follow the doctors' advice. and to offer him a priesthood blessing. Wednesday we roped the Elders into coming to a cita with Pedro. They gave him a beautiful blessing and promised him that God would help him follow his commandments. Thursday morning Pedro recieved the results from all the tests the doctors had run. Today, Monday he is going to start a 40 day (notice the symbolism) treatment program. He will go to a center with a pool every morning at 6am. He will recieve some heavy medications and be heavily montiored but they predict that he will indeed be able to touch water normally by the end of it all. He is puting in the effort and the solution will come. What a relief. So the new fecha is June 7th I think. What is the Sunday forty days from today? I think it's the 7th. Well, anyways. He could use your prayers.
And there is my life. Keep you updated. Have a good week.
Love,
Hermana Hannah Ashby
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