Daniel was dehydrated!

FAMILIA!!!!!

Where do i even begin??? DEVIN is going home haha que locisimo! I can't believe it. Honestly i remember like yesterday emailing back and forth with him and he still had like 6 months left. haha he's been an inspiring missionary though that has changes many lifes of both investigators AND missionaries! SOOOO ELDER GUB... WELCOME HOME!!!

 

As far as my week? Yall ready for this? haha It was a blast. Honestly i am enjoying my mission sooo very much. I am so blessed it's not even funny! God is soo soo good. I love him! I love as a missionary how we have so much time to introspect and improve ourselves and our efforts. This past week Elder Harris, O'Neill and Myself had a time to introspect on how we could baptize our investigator Daniel. Daniel is a 23 year old and very smart. He is a guy that loves politics and has met Hilary Clinton and all sorts of people! On top of that he is a Youth Pastor for a different church! He has preached to soooo many different young people about god. SOO he had a lot of questions and a lot to talk about.

 

Anyways.. A member (Cyndi) brought him to church about 3 weeks ago. When i first got here to the area we began working with Daniel. Daniel had many many doubts. He had doubts BUT he knew who christ was. He knew what faith was. He knew all the basics already. He truly understood many many of the teachings of Jesus Christ. So it all started with a simple question that Daniel had. He wanted to know how our church was different? and why ours is christ church? So you can only imagine where we began... THE RESTORATION!!! Before teaching him the restoration we did some planning and preparing. We called Cyndi and found out a little bit about him. We found out that he was in to politics and also that he was a visual learner. SO that being known we taught him an object lesson called "The Nails". To briefly describe the nails lesson it is 7 nails. 1 nail is vertical and then you have to balance the other 6 nails on top of the 1 nail. If it makes sense then yes it sounds pretty impossible. haha

SO it is impossible unless you build the nails how Jesus Christ built his church. Which consist of prophets, apostles, visions, revelations, God is the same yesterday today and forever, Faith in Jesus Christ and also Christs Authority. (it's hard to explain through email) 

So we taught Daniel the restoration using these nails and sure enough... HE ATE IT ALL UP! He loved it. It clicked in his head and really he knew that the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints was the true church. We then continued to teach him. He eventually came to the conclusion and said "Elders I want to be baptized, BUT I want to receive an answer from God just as Joseph Smith did, to know if I should do it." Really it was an understandable statement and we confidently said "okay. YOU WILL." 

 

Us as the missionaries didn't know exactly how it would happen but we had the faith that it would. 

Well the following day was sunday. Daniel never showed up to church :( He didn't answer our phone calls or anything. He just simply ignored us (though it seemed)! The next day was monday FHE. So we show up to FHE and sure enough Daniel is there. He says "Elders can i speak with you?" we said "sure whats up" He takes us into a room and then tells us "Elders I want to be baptized into this church. I'm ready to convert myself!" hahaha Shocked as can be. My companions and myself all look at each other. We said, "really? What changed?" He then goes on to tell us how the reason he wasn't able to make it to church was because he wasn't feeling well and he went to the hospital. He was feeling extremely sick. When he got to the hospital the doctor simply looked at him after doing a few different check-ups and said, "DANIEL YOU NEED WATER" (turns out daniel was dehydrated) 

Little did Daniel know or think that, THAT experience is how he was going to receive his answer. He not only took the statement "DANIEL YOU NEED WATER" as a physical matter but also a spiritual one. To Daniel this simple statement meant a spiritual rebirth. Being born again by water and by the spirit. From that day forward until yesterday March 23, 2013 Daniel was as solid as ever and he got baptized!!!

 

What a miracle that god performed in our behalf. He answered Daniels prayer. It wasn't the exact same way as he answered joseph smiths but HE ANSWERED~! What an amazing thought. God will answer any question that we present before him. He truly is a loving tender god. He will give his children what they want as long as it is for the good :)

 

I love you all family and hope that each of us can never cease ourselves from the questions of our soul :) ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE KNOCK AND IT SHALL BE OPENED UNTO YOU!!!

Elder Ovard

The Turner family from Hollywood.  They were baptized the week after I left.  I love them!