I got my new companion, Elder Freeman. He just came from Lana'i, an island with only 2 missionaries serving on it. He's from Lehi and has been out 18 months. I'm really looking forward to this next transfer because we've already worked good in just the short time that we've been together.
Things have been kind of crazy because they just put another set of elders into our branch, so I have to show them their area and all of their investigators, plus try to cover our side and get my companion familiar with everything that's going on. Plus none of them speak Marshallese so it's been an interesting past week. All good tho!
I guess the highlight of this past week was the miracle baptism that we had! The first night of the transfer our dinner cancelled so I was calling around frantically trying to find dinner for all of us and I called our go-to family, the Anitoks. They told us to come over and while we were eating we talked about how there was 2 child of record baptisms the next day. I asked him who they were and one of the kids that he said was the son of one of our former investigators that we'd been trying to get a lesson with. The kid is 8 years old and his grandparents, as well as all of his aunties and uncles are members, but when the rest of his family joined the church, his dad didn't. He's been through countless missionaries and has heard all of the lessons multiple times, but he has something that's holding him back.
Anyway we found out that neither of his parents are members and that means that he's a convert baptism. So the first thing next morning we drove out to his house and asked his parents if we could teach their son the lessons before his baptism that night. We gave him a crash course on all of the lessons in about an hour and a half, then he was baptized that night. Everything went smooth and I couldn't have asked for a better first day of the transfer!
There was another miracle baptism in our mission. 200 people from mainland China came on a business trip to Hawaii and went to the visitors center at the Laie Temple. They gave away over 100 copies of the Book of Mormon. Out of those people, 10 said that they wanted to take the missionary discussions and be baptized before they returned to China in 2 days. So the next day our mission's first missionary from mainland China went and taught all 10 of them, then they were all baptized that night.
These stories illustrate how the Lord is truly hastening His work, just like He promised. We had a meeting about this yesterday and one of the things they talked about was how the Lord was going to hasten His work regardless of whether we're on board or not. So the question isn't a matter of whether He's going to hasten it, it's a question of whether we'll be on His side helping Him when it happens. And the time is now. There are so many people being prepared and I've been blessed to find a few of them and bring them to the gospel. This is the greatest work in the world and I hope that we're all on the Lord's side helping him accomplish it!
Really love you guys!
-Elder Merrill
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