Heat Wave

July 28, 2009

Hola familia,

Ricardo came to church! Neither of his sons did but this was a huge step for him. It's really cool how we got it to happen too. Elder Becerra and I planned really hard for how it was we were going to accomplish the task of getting him to come to church. We used all of our methods of planning from our mission including ODOR-PAL. We ended up planning out two lessons. The first one would focus on authority, apostasy, and the restoration all referenced from the bible. We shared probably about 25 scriptures with him covering the three topics. That lesson went really well. The purpose of this lesson was to give a setting for the next lesson. In which we watched Joseph Smith: the prophet of the restoration. It was in English because it hasn't even been released yet. He speaks and understands English really well though. During the hour of the movie I looked over at him occasionally to see his reaction. His eyes were glued to it. You could see how much he was thinking and pondering on what he was seeing. When the movie ended we talked about how he felt and what happened in the movie. The conversation was simple. Basically it went along the lines of, "That really happened? Yep." He was stunned and speechless. Everything just really started clicking in his mind. And to top it all off the spirit was very strong. Elder Becerra and I left that lesson on a super spiritual high.

Yesterday was not a good day. I ate something weird on Sunday I think because I had the symptoms of food poisoning. Sunday night from the hours of 11:00 pm to about 5:30 am I threw-up about 6 or 7 times. It wasn't very fun. I got a blessing Monday morning. We took the day off so my body could recuperate. It's so boring and miserable to be a missionary stuck at home sick. This is only my second time like this. I slept really well last night and I've felt a lot better today.

We went on exchanges with the zone leaders this last week. I was with Elder Clark. He's a really good missionary. He honestly talks with everyone. I learned and grew a lot just in the one day we were together. We also had a really interesting lesson together. I think I've told you about Deborah before. The spirit told us to go see her. So of course she was at home when we knocked on the door. She invited us and we began talking. Right away she told us about a dream that she had had three days ago. It was a dream about the second coming. She was with her family trying to find safety. She saw some stairs or steps going up a large hill. At the top of the hill were two missionaries. She told me that one of them was me and that the other was Elder Clark. The thing that was odd about that was that she's never met Elder Clark before. I wanted to make sure that she really did see specifically us two and not just two missionaries. And it really was us. We talked to her a little bit about this and she thinks that it came from God.

After that lesson Elder Clark and I were talking about how we've always heard about weird stories like that. Where people in essence get dreamed to somebody's house. We were both very stunned and pretty excited. We're going to review her dream with her in more detail when we go back next time, probably tomorrow.

We're going to go see Jacob tonight. I have something for him to take home to you. And to answer your question he is not a member. I think he'll be coming to Utah in about a week.

Sadly, we haven't heard anything from Lana yet. Heavenly Father knows where she is though. He'll make something work out.

It has been really hot lately. This morning when we went outside it felt like the hottest morning that I've ever felt. The summer will pass over in a while and we'll have our cool weather back.

The Boyle's wedding went well. Now we're just waiting for all of their family to go back home and we'll move back in. It'll probably be on next Monday. We still visit them just about everyday.

I love you family,

Elder Ben Arnold