Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there! This week was a great week for me! Sitting about 20 ft. away from a General Authority really makes an Elder happy wouldn’t you think? I got a lot to share this week, so enough with the jokes! Let’s get going!"
This week I went on interchanges with one of our district leaders who is having a lot of problems with his companion. They are really not getting along at all, and it seems like it’s really affecting their work. Elder Sinclair and I did the best week could to prepare ourselves spiritually so that we could adequately help them out and give them the advice that they needed. It actually turned out to be great. I stayed in the area this time with the district leader and we had a great day where we were able to follow the Spirit. We taught a lady with her 3 children who we had thought had been hiding from us, we had a great lesson where we taught about the doctrine of Christ, and she ended up confessing in the end that she had been hiding, but that something told her that she should listen today. We told her not to deny the promptings of the Spirit, and that if she felt it in that moment, she should keep listening to us. It was a good experience.
We also had the interviews with Presidente Flores this week, which was a good experience as well. President is trying to mold us into real leaders in these last months that we have left so that we can leave the mission knowing that there will be good leaders to back us up. We then were asked by President to accompany him to all of the Elders houses to show him where they are and to revise their area books and English books and all that. It was kind of a wasted afternoon because we weren’t able to do much work in our own areas and we were sitting around a lot, but we did get to have some quality time with President, which was good.
Now I’m going to dedicate the rest of my time to tell you all about my day on Saturday! We woke up bright and early so that we could get there way early. We showed up with our freshly dry cleaned suits, new haircuts, shined shoes, all the spiffiness just for the arrival of Elder Ballard. We sat in the first 3 rows since we were in the choir (awesome!) and waited for awhile for Elder Ballard to show up. We were all pretty nervous in the choir and the anticipation wasn’t helping. Finally, he arrived. We stood up in reverence as he approached the stand with Elder Jay Jensen from the Seventy, and Elder Clark from the Central America Presidency of the Seventy. After the opening prayer, it was our turn. We all got up there, (Elder Tinkham, Elder Morgan, Elder Hinckley, and Elder Sinclair from our group, including a couple of others, and Elder Tingey playing the piano). We started out great, I could see that we were all shaking, but it was going good. We were about to finish the 2nd verse and hit up the awesome acapella part, when I look over and see that Elder Hinckley is getting a little tipsy....uh oh.....well we kept singing for a second, not knowing what to do...and he`s out. Elder Hinckley fainted in the middle of the song! We felt really bad for the guy, so we just helped him out of the room and then we finished the song. After that we listened to the talks, which were all great! I could talk for hours about what all happened, but the time is not sufficient. Elder Ballard gave an amazing talk about becoming a missionary Master Teacher with extraordinary faith. It was just incredible listening to him talk, because...well yeah he basically wrote half of the things we read as a missionary (Preach my Gospel and Our Search for Happiness). He told some stories that had all of us shedding tears in the congregation, some of them I will never forget. The Spirit was just so strong there is no way I could explain it completely. I now have a small, but just a small taste, of what the Nephites said in the Book of Mormon when they witnessed the Savior praying when they explained that “no tongue could tell or nobody could explain the marvelous feelings that they felt in those moments (or something like that).“
After the, meeting we had to hurry home because we had quite a few baptismal interviews to hold so that they could have the baptisms later that night. I was a little bit nervous because I was going to interview a man who supposedly had been caught drinking by a couple of members about 2 days before the interview. But I did the very best that I could to have a spiritual interview, so that the Lord could indicate to me whether the man was ready to be baptized or not. I taught him all the applicable doctrine that I thought that I should teach, and in the end we had a wonderful prayer, and I was able to give him a priesthood blessing. I did the very best I could, and he ended up passing the interview. There was nothing that I saw in him that made him unworthy of taking baptism upon him.
That night, we had the baptism of Michael! It was quite possibly the most poorly planned baptism in all of existence, since in the morning we didn’t have time to plan it, AND the bishops were all gone in a meeting with Elder Ballard. But the good thing is that it happened, and it was great. Michael is going to be a great missionary, because he got to participate in the setting apart of 2 missionaries right after his confirmation (he held the mic) and he told us that it was really impacting to him. He left with the Young Men to go out visiting that very night! I love the kid!
After the baptism, we only had about 30 minutes till we needed to be in the house. So, that normally means that we would just throw in the towel and walk back to the house slowly to begin planning. But the Spirit indicated to Elder Sinclair and I that our day has not ended. We continued contacting, and ended up having 2 great contacts, and we even put appointments for this week. It was a wonderful experience of growing our faith, and “eliminating the natural man.”
This week was a great week! I love you guys and hope that everything is going well!
Vaya Pues!
Elder Tinkham
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