8-31-09 Email. Subject: 4 baptisms, woot

Hey all.> So this week was awesome. We are just doing all of the normal missionary stuff, and its going great. I cant really remember details of the week, but all four baptisms went through, no surprise. Now we are just working with the mother of the 4 to get her married and baptized too, hopefully this month. We also have like 4 other dates for baptisms this month too, so we spend a lot of time with those people (teaching, answering questions, staying friends, etc). One of them has been an investigator for a while. He is about 70 years old and lives with his catholic wife. He reads a ton, and eats up the lessons, he just doesn't seem to be able to come to church. So, we put a date with him to be baptized to push him a little. Jaja he is a little crazy. He doesn't have teeth, and is always moving his hands when we teach like its gonna help him learn. He reminds me of grandpa Lofgren, just Latino and not as smart. > But anyway, with the baptismal group we had, the star of the four that read a ton and had the most interest scared us on Friday. We were going through the 4th lesson and came to prophets and she absolutely refused to believe there was a modern prophet. Crazy eh? She knew the BoM was true, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and that this church is the church of Christ but she kept on saying that there is no way she could believe there is a prophet today. So I was like Oh crap. What do we do with that? We taught them for like an hour more (because that is a serious doubt) about if the churc his on the earth, there sorta has to be a prophet and there has to be the authority to baptize. We told her that the only reason we were there as missionaries was because we were called by prophets. We threw every scripture at her about prophets and even her family started to teach and explain it to her. And then at the end of the lesson guess what happened? She still refused that there is a prophet and agreed to pray, but said that this time God wouldnt answer her. So, panicking because I knew she wouldn't be baptized without a testimony of this, remembered that we had left the conference issue of ensign at their house. I had the Mom go get it and I marked three of the talks by President Monson. She needed the fruits of the modern prophet to believe. We went back the next day and she was 180 degrees different. What a relief eh? So all went well.> Today for pday we had the "one month check" for the newbies. Oh yeah, also I went and got surgery this morning. How could I forget that. We had to wake up at 5:30 fr our appointment. Dad, remember how the first surgery on my toe I had like 5 shots of anesthetic and still almost yelled my lungs out from the pain? yeah they did the same thing except with no anesthetic. They cut a bit of it like 1cm in, then got a tool and jammed it all the way down the bed of my toenail. I almost died. There was another guy there for the same thing that passed out. Anyway, hope it heals up.> Back to the one month check- we went to the office that is an hour away and right by the foot doctor and talked with the president and the AP´s and then went up a mountain, took pictures, came back and ate at the presidents house. All in all it was a loss of time, but oh well. Now we are in San Jose, its been raining all day and neither of us had an umbrella so Im pretty wet. Everything is well though. Pura Vida.> -Harrison