Feeling the Spirit

To my silly family:

I just don't know what I'm going to do with my family when I get home...I don't even know if I'll fit in anymore... everyone's so busy and important. The pictures you sent cracked me up! Especially Dad wearing those silly glasses. And Stetson is just SO cute! I'm glad Mylie had a good birthday; I don't think I'll recognize her at all; she's grown up so much! I agree with Rick when he said it sounds like Ethan is becoming more like Calvin all the time :) What a funny kid.

It's been another crazy week in Gretna. Oh and by the way, did I ever tell you that this town is so big it even has one stop light? And of course, I church on every corner. So it that respect, it's a lot like what Rick said Honduras was like. It's the same thing, people just don't understand why our church is really any different, it's only when they understand authority that it seems to click. But guess what? We're having a baptism!! Woohoo! It's scheduled for this Saturday as of now, but I think we might end up pushing it back a week just to make sure he's ready. His wife joined the church last year and he's been coming with her most of the time, so it was really just a matter of time. But it was the neatest experience. We were meeting with them and I was getting a little frustrated actually, because it didn't seem like any real teaching was going on. They were just talking with a question or comment every now and then from us. (That's actually a pretty common problem out here, boy do people just love to talk). They didn't seem to be really going anywhere with all their talking, but something just kept telling me to listen to him. So I tried really hard to stay focused on what he was really saying and encourage him when he spoke of his feelings about the gospel. Eventually he basically was bearing his testimony to us about how he knew it was true and he knew what he needed to do. And at one point you just knew the Holy Ghost was speaking to him confirming what he said was true. Then we basically said to him, well, what are you waiting for, and he responded "I don't know - I'm waiting for you!" And we replied that we were just waiting for him to make up his mind. And if that's the case, let's set a date! And he did. So awesome. The Spirit is so real.

The influence of the adversary is also real as we found this week as well. And one of his biggest tools is confusion. We were really disappointed when we went back to see some of our investigators this week that we thought were progressing so well, only to find that they had been confused and we had to explain a lot of things over again that they had understood before but the adversary has been working on them....arrgggghhh (shaking fist). The spirit of contention and confusion really is of the devil. The spirit speaks in plainness and peace. You know what some of the weird concerns I've encountered recently are? We were teaching the plan of salvation, but we didn't get very far, because they started insisting that Adam and Eve weren't the only people on the earth, they were just the only ones in the garden - otherwise who did their kids marry? They also insist that angels have wings and got confused when we referred to Moroni as an angel, but she understood when we explained he was a resurrected being.... people are so funny. And just for the record - I looked up every single instance where the word angel is mentioned in the Bible and never once does it say anything at all about angels having wings. Just goes to show how powerful false traditions are.

I better get going but I just love my family so much and I want you to know that!

~Melissa

P.S. Did you know that Ron Carter died (author of Prelude to Glory Series)? Somebody just told me that, but I guess he died sometime last Fall. I guess he never got to writing those books on the Mexican colonies that he was planning.... I was looking forward to those.