Don´t Freak Out. I´m Alive and Baptizing.

That´s right... we had a baptism finally!!!  That´s the first baptism in this area for seven months!  There hasn´t been one since January.  So we´re happy about that, and we are going to have more coming up soon.  One got baptized once and never got confirmed... and there is no record of her baptism, so we have to do it again.  haha.  How weird.  So that´s that, and we will baptize her without complaining. 


This week has been great, and I´ve been totally healthy!  However, one of the brethren in our ward hasn´t been so healthy.  He´s getting a tumor removed, so please pray for him.  His name is Antonio, and he is the most interesting person I have ever met.  When I met him the first time, I was shocked at how well he understood all the doctrine considering he is a convert.  He´s really quite old, and can´t even walk to church.  He was attacked by three men with machettes several years ago, and was hit three times in the neck, so his voice is really soft and a little raspy.  But also epic.


So we were talking to the Bishop about him, and he asked us if we knew his conversion story.  I thought I did, but I´m glad the Bishop told us anyway, cuz it turns out I didn´t.


When he was a lot younger, he worked in a factory, and Nuevo San Juan didn´t even exist yet.  There were no members in that area at all.  One day on the floor at work he found two pages of an unidentified book.  One was the testimony of three witnesses, and the other, a random page that had the words 2 Nefi on top.  He read them and immediately recognized that they were from God.  He tried, but had no way of finding out where the book was, or anything about it.  But somewhere in the pages he saw the word, "Mormon" and it stayed in the back of his mind.


Several years later, he returned home and greeted his wife.  She informed him that two younge men had just come by on bikes with some messages.  They were called Mormons.  He asked her which way they went and then bolted after them on his own bike.  He finally found them and yelled after them.  They stopped and he got to talking with them.  He showed them the two pages and asked if they could identify them.  They showed him The Book of Mormon and where the pages fit in.  They gave him a copy, and as he held that book in his hands for the first time, he stood there a wept.


Later, he was baptized and worked with the missionaries to try and establish the church in the area.  He worked with them all the time, and came under heavy criticism by his former religious friends.  He´s still a very active member (for his weak cercumstances) and his testimony is super powerful.  My comp and I went to visit him before his surgery to comfort him.  We just spent 30min listening to him share his testimonies of simple clear truths.  But the powerful spirit behind his words just left me and my companion in a dumb awe.


I love Antonio, and I am talking to the bishop about recording him sharring his conversion story and testimony on tape and video.  We want the church to publish it, because we know that it would be a powerful missionary tool all over the world.  I´ll let you know how that all goes soon.


This mission is amazing.  If I came here just to get to know that man and share his story, then so be it.  That´s why I´m here.  I hope his story will carry on, changing hearts as an eternal legacy of the Gospel truths that this man represents.  He never served a mission becuase he never had a chance, but how great was his mission.  God truly will let that man´s life stand to confound the false doctrines of the world and bear shinning testimony of the truest book on earth!


I love and miss you all, and hope that you will read that book!  How rare a possession it is! There should not a single day pass by without spending time within its pages.  I bear my own testimony that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.


Love,


Elder Kent Thalman