So This Week Was Full Of Absolute Craziness

Diego Baptism Group

August 29, 2016

WEEK 43

ALOHA family!  I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH!!

So this week was full of absolute craziness. BUT I loved it! It was filled with following the Spirit, finding people who are going to progress, and… BAPTISMS!

Elder Cox and I knew that we were going to have a great week, even though we just lost a couple of baptisms. We chose to forget what happened and focused on finding the people who were ready now instead of losing time with people who Satan puts in our path to waste our time. We focused on the people who are ready to get baptized and that brings us to Diego.

Diego... he is a cool kid! He’s an intense kid but I am privileged to know him. I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father for putting him in our path. We met him the first time we came into this area but we felt he wasn’t going to progress really fast, so we wanted to take it slow with him, so we were just texting him, becoming friends. We left him with a pamphlet, and then one day he told us he read it and had a lot of questions. So we had him meet us at the chapel.

We showed him everything and we talked. We gave him the lesson and man, did I feel the Spirit. First, some background of this kid. He’s Islamic and believes in Alá which is another name for God and everything. Well, his religion is very complicated. But man, the Spirit was so strong. So we taught him the lesson and he told me, "I don’t believe it.” He believes in prophets but only in the prophet of his religion that died forever ago and came out with the Quran. (not going to lie...had no idea what he believed in...)

So I asked him to PRAY! We continued on with the lesson some more and everything but wanted him to pray. He fought against us and didn’t want to do anything of that sort but in the end, we won! He said the prayer AND that’s when we felt the Spirit so strong! We then started giving him more lessons. He came to church. (A LOT OF PEOPLE IN THE WARD KNOWS HIM. They all doubted that he would get baptized.)

Diego Baptism

Then...well....he told us he didn’t believe any of it. And I knew… I don’t know how... but I knew he was lying. He was just scared. I knew he received a message from God but was just scared. So he started asking a lot of questions about the Book of Mormon and everything. What I pretty much did was tear every shred of his religion to part and showed him how true our church is by evidence, but I know with all my heart, not even by evidence gets people to believe. I then bore my testimony that all of what we said was true and told him to pray, so he did. He started and said, "Padre Celestial, I thank you for these missionaries that have been put in my path and I want an answer..." and then we sat there for about 5 minutes in silence. And then he ended the prayer, and he was like...."THAT WAS MY ANSWER?!?!” and the truth...he was still scared... but he wanted to get baptized and didn’t want anyone else there—just me and Elder Cox. It was awesome. BUT I EVEN HAVE A BIGGER STORY ABOUT HIS CONFIRMATION!!! Now that was crazy. Satan really didn’t want this kid to be a part of the Church....

Yulissa Baptism Group

But I will have to tell you guys that story later. We also baptized Yulissa, who is very cool.

And we are teaching English to Marisol, who is very Catholic but she loves us so I think she will listen to us and will get baptized soon.

Teaching Marisol

Well, I love you guys!!!!! IT’S BEEN AN AWESOME WEEK!

- Elder Pukahi