Elder Kurt K. Mooney Oregon Portland Mission

2011 March 28
Dearest Mommy,

Well, I'm feeling a little lazy about writing a letter right now and it sounds like President Pister stole my thunder as far as informing you on the baptism goes, so I'll write a shorter letter this week haha.

Monday turned out to be a pretty "blah" day for us in that we just did our normal P-day washing and writing before going and playing kickball with the English elders (boring!). After that, Mateo Lopez invited us to his house for dinner and a family home evening with he and his wife. It went well, but it's a bummer because his wife Nelley is going to be in Pennsylvania visiting her daughter for a MONTH, so we won't be seeing her til she gets back.

Tuesday started out as a pretty depressing day in that we had four member-present lessons fall through, but what happened at the end of the night made it all awesome. We had planned on taking brother Muniz with us to an appointment, and I felt impressed to ask his son Yahir to come with us, not thinking that he would actually do it, but at the end of everything, he said yes and came out with us to a visit. He said that he was pretty stoked on the idea of changing, and wants to come out with us more often... sweet! The other awesome thing that happened was that we had a SWEET lesson with Oscar and Franci, where we took them to do a temple tour with hno Sanchez. It. Was. Powerful! The spirit was really strong and they were completely pumped about it... hopefully in the coming weeks they can change their schedule to start coming out to church.

Wednesday we had a couple of awesome things happen. We had an awesome lesson with a girl named Janet who is a friend of the Sanchez' daughter Tania. She had read all the introduction pages to the book of Mormon as well as the first ten chapters of first Nephi and was super stoked on the imagery of the vision of Lehi... She's super smart, and accepted a soft baptismal invitation. Holy cow she's awesome and is looking forward to being able to come to church the Sunday after general conference.

The other awesome thing that happened that night was with a family that is studying with the Jehovah's Witnesses. They had seemed pretty contentious when we met them, so we were more or less anticipating a bash when they said we could stop by. It turned out to be a really sweet lesson and they liked what we talked about. The whole time was just answering their questions and clearing up their doubts.... and planting a few of our own about the JW's :-). I'm starting to get kinda stoked on this area haha.

Oh! One more awesome thing that happened that night is that I got a call about Adan getting baptized and the fact that he wanted me to baptize him! Oh my goodness I about freaked out after hearing both of those things haha.

Thursday, we started out by helping the Sanchez to paint their bathroom, so we laid down some primer and HOLY COW! We used almost an entire can of primer to get it thick enough to look good on the drywall... it was like soaking up everything that we would put on it! After that adventure, we had a sweet dinner appointment with the Chandler family. They're a white couple who own a construction business, and it turns out that they're absolute champs. We taught them a little bit about the revolution, and right then and there he called up one of his workers and said that he wanted to schedule a dinner with him so that we could meet him. Awesome.

Friday we finished the ceiling in the bathroom at the Sanchez by painting it a parchment white that laid down really well. All that was left was to paint the walls, so yeah. We had another lesson with Janet and talked about her reading. She said that she believes that it's true every time that she reads from the book of Mormon and that she wants to come to church. She also wanted to talk a little about what the 10 commandments were (since she hadn't learned about them in the Catholic church), so we talked about that and focused a little bit on the Sabbath day. Awesome.

Saturday, we had a cool lesson with Osvaldo and his mom. We had taught him the restoration the last time we went over there and he understood it... kind of. We left him with Alma 7 to read, but he hadn't read it, so we read with him. It was really funny because I extended the soft baptismal date and he said, "oh well now that we read this it makes a lot more sense! For sure! Once I know it's true I think it'd be the right thing to do." I love the scriptures. Most of the time (I've come to know) the prophets say it best.

Sunday was the magical day of the baptism. We were feeling a little down in the dumps though because nobody had showed up for church and it didn't look like there was any hope for someone getting there. The sweet thing is that as the third hour was about to start, we got a text from Franci saying "hey I'm outside... where do I go?" Sometimes the Lord throws you a bone once in a while.

The baptism was awesome and now Adan Gutierrez is the newest member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I took some pictures, but forgot to bring my camera with me to the library, so I'll have to just send them (in a more secure package this time) when I fill up the card.

After that, we went to the Pisters and had some dinner and talked about how amaz-z-zing the branch is doing there. They've had 30 convert baptisms in the last two years in that little branch. Only ONE of them is inactive, and they're working with her to bring her back. That says a lot about the leadership that goes on in that branch.... I'm just glad that I've been able to play a small part of it.

Well, that's all the news for now. I hope you're enjoying some warmer weather, because we're still in the 50's and cloudy haha. Spring is springing though, so I don't complain. I love you all and hope you're having a great week!

Love,

-Elder Kurt Mooney