Elder McKay

Wow!  This week has been full of miracles!  I think your prayers from home have worked because it sounds like both Benjamin and I are seeing some really cool things happening!

This past Friday the mission office called Elder Bennion and I with a referral. This lady, Jessica, had called in and requested missionaries saying she needed some serious spiritual help.  We showed up at her place a few hours later not quite knowing what to expect, but she turned out to be the most prepared person I have ever encountered.  Her life had kind of crashed a few weeks before and she'd attempted suicide and ended up in the hospital for a few weeks.  Just before she got out, one of the nurses told her, "Girl, what you're missing in your life right now is God." She mulled that over and thought how a couple of her distant relatives seemed to be happy/fulfilled as Mormons, so she looked up the mission office in the phone book and gave them a call.  Mom, do you know how sometimes you described trying to keep up with Dad as drinking from a fire hose? Well, this lady is drinking from the fire hose and asking for more!  We spoke of the Atonement for over an hour on Friday, left her with a Book of Mormon, and setup another appointment for the next day.  Saturday we met at a member family's home and discussed Faith, Repentance, Baptism, and the Holy Ghost.  Sunday she came to church with her kids and told us that she had stayed up till 2am reading the Book of Mormon and loved it.  She's attending FHE with the same member family tonight, and then tomorrow we have another appointment where we will finally teach her about the Restoration and why the Book of Mormon is even important!  It's soooo awesome to see her progressing so quickly and so spiritually hungry and thirsting for Christ!!  She wants to be baptized in another 2 weeks on Oct 2nd in between General Conference sessions.  Lol, Elder Bennion and I have been on a sort of high ever since - I'm convinced that it is experiences like this that make the work "the best two years".

Then we have this other guy named Chris that we found a couple weeks ago. When we first met him and talked about the Book of Mormon, he said he felt something really powerful in his heart when we read from it - especially when we talked about his father's death and Alma 40.  He's super busy though with work and, after that initial discussion, we lost contact with him until earlier this week.  He has read a large portion of the book and has been sharing with everyone he comes across - his brother, manager at work, his friends, even the people who's homes he goes into to work!  Haha, we love him for that!  =D  I think we're going to get like 20 new investigators just through Chris.  Anyway, so he also wants to be baptized as soon as possible, but has trouble getting work off for church.  Get this, he's from Rochester, NY and had never heard of any of this.  Palmyra is like 50 miles from his home and he had no clue, so now he's all excited to visit the Sacred Grove and other sites when he's back up that way around Halloween.  Super cool guy; he's a single father about my age with this 1 year old son that is a blast.  When we invited him to baptism, we asked if he believed the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. He replied, "Well, to be honest (my heart kind of dropped at that point).....to be honest, I think it is so much more than that.  I know 'the word' is supposed to be like the ultimate or something, but when I read this book, I feel like God is talking directly to me.  Like he knows me."  Kaching!  So happy for him!

Well, yeah, lots of other stuff that happened this week, but my computer time is almost up again.  I made a point of writing my letter to President first this week, so now I only had a few minutes to read and write.  Oh, Jake, you know how we always talked about going to Mauritius?  I had dinner with this black family in our ward last night and it turns out she's from Mauritius!  She and her husband are also the couple on page 5 of the Chastity pamphlet that we missionaries hand out to people.  Lol, they had their picture taken for it several years ago when they were both at BYU.

Ummm....oh yeah, I went on trade offs with Elder Schuyler.  He's a native american with an awesome awesome conversion story.  I don't have time to go into details, but he got mobbed by a bunch of teenage girls who thought he was Jacob Black (from Twilight) one day while he was on the reservation with his harley motorbike and leather jacket.  One of those gals who asked for a picture with him turned out to be Mormon and what he described as "the most beautiful girl I've ever seen."  So of course, he pursued her and she introduced him to the missionaries.  It took 6 months for it to finally sink in, but one day the Spirit just clobbered him super hard and stayed with him for about a week.  He went out with the elders every day for two years until he was old enough to go on his own mission and now he's here.  We had a lot of fun together.  :)

Well, I love you, but time is gone.  Adios!

Elder Me.