So this next month's theme is definitely going to be "Miracle May"!
We just got transfer calls last night and.... surprise surprise, I'm staying here in Mesa! Elder Lindquist and I are both staying here, and we only have 4 people leaving the zone so it's going to be a pretty small transfer. I'm way excited though, because this last week has been incredible. Not necessarily any wild or ridiculous things in our area personally, but all kinds of people in the zone are accepting baptismal dates!! We had a super rough April but May is shaping up to be the best month I've ever seen by far. We're determined to have the best month any zone has ever seen. The missionaries who live with us are seeing crazy things in their area. They now have 10 soon to be 11 or 12 people with a baptismal date, and it just keeps going up! People are ready and now's the time! That area hasn't really produced for a while, but when it's ready it's ready. There have even been situations where somebody the missionaries weren't even teaching called them up and said she wanted to get baptized. The field is definitely white and ready to harvest. It's actually really funny because now we go around saying "Miracle May" ALL the time. If anyone is going to teach a lesson or extend a date we just tell them "Why not? It's Miracle May!" So that's the theme for all of our wards and especially our zone this month.
Our highlight of the week has probably been Valeria Hernandez. So we heard about this girl a month ago when one of the young women (Amanda McKay) came up to us and said her friend told her she wanted to get baptized. I guess Val moves from house to house quite a bit and can be hard to get ahold of, so we have just been trying to get ahold of her through Amanda all month long and it just hasn't worked out. We finally set a time to meet with her after mutual on Wednesday and she really is super ready to get baptized. We actually found out that as Hermana Farley and Hermana Escobar went tracting and looking through formers, they totally knocked on a door that Val answered! When Val got to the door she said she was already getting baptized and left it at that. Apparently this was her cousin's house, and missionaries had come and talked to her and her cousins quite a bit (I believe mostly Elder Johnson). We hadn't even met her at this time. When we did meet her, we found out that she has all of these member friends at school and that one of them told her to pray about joining our church. She didn't know too much about it but she took him seriously and prayed about it. She had a crazy strong spiritual experience and she got moved to tears. She felt something fill her whole body, something that she had never felt before. From that day on, she knew what she needed to do and started telling everyone she was Mormon. She's enrolled into seminary now and is going to girls camp pretty soon here. As we taught her she said she was very serious about this and that she wouldn't be there if she didn't mean it. Her mom had listened to the missionaries back in the day but when she got re-married it caused stress in the marriage and she stopped. Her dad is actually in England and way Catholic, but totally supports her and that's actually where she's going this summer.
So...Val, who's 16 now, is going to be baptized next Saturday on May 12th because of some crazy conflicts with activities this weekend. This is what happens when members are missionaries.
We also had a pretty crazy day on Saturday, when we met with Javier Luna, a member referral who we've only been able to teach a couple times. He's going through a rough time because he recently lost his job and is going through all kinds of financial and legal stress. The kinds of things we deal with as missionaries absolutely just blow my mind. Javier is a very visionary man and apparently when he asks for things or asks questions visions just flow to him like water he says. It's way interesting hearing about all the crazy visions and experiences he's had in the past. We've been talking to him a lot about baptism and we even fasted and prayed with him yesterday to see if he should be baptized on May 19th, but we haven't been able to follow up with him too much. He's a really quiet, kind of stern guy, and it can be difficult sometimes to get him to really open up. He did come to church yesterday though, and he totally brought his dad! His dad had some good questions, and we're going to try to see if we can teach both of them this week.
Tuesday was super cool! We went to the Visitor's Center with Milta Millan and her boyfriend Ricardo and they loved it! Ricardo has been pretty skeptical about baptism and she said he's the main obstacle between her and baptism. She wants to do it, but she wants a more sure answer that it's what she needs to do it, and she doesn't want to do it alone. Ricardo wasn't exactly like we expected him to be. Milta's such a nice sweet Puerto Rican lady and he's totally more of a gangster. He's shorter, bald, and is covered with tattoos and piercings. We actually found out he does tattoos now, which explains why he was so fascinated with a lot of the art at the church and the Visitor's Center. After watching the Joseph Smith movie, we showed him the temple and talked a lot about what we do and why it's important. He really liked learning about Joseph Smith actually and wanted a Book of Mormon. He couldn't see too well, but randomly we actually had a large print spanish copy in the car! We never have extra BOM's that big so that was totally cool. He even asked for another copy so he could give one to his friend and invite him to church. Milta really wants to take her son and grandsons to the Visitor's Center, so it looks like that's what we're going to be doing tomorrow! There's a lot of potential in this family and we pray that they will all be open, willing, and accepting. I love to see the light that has come into Milta's life. She literally glows and has been so much happier as we've continued to teach her and help her make changes in her life. She's also praying about a baptismal date.
Last night we also met with Itzel and Karen, and they're definitely progressing along smoothly. They came to church and Saturday we gave Karen this illustrated children's version of the Book of Mormon, and she is already in Alma! She knows and remembers every single story that she's read, and it was awesome teaching and reviewing everything with her last night. She's a way intelligent little girl and she's loving learning about everything. Karen has also been getting refreshed on everything, since it's been quite a while since she's been to church. We found out a few minutes before Gospel Principles yesterday that we were teaching it, and as we taught she was way involved and we could see that she was truly enjoying being back in church. Some people just need a little push :) They also have the funniest, cutest little 2-year old girl and for some reason I love to hear little kids speak in spanish. It's the best.
So there's another family that is looking really promising - Ofelia, Griselda, and Emily, who we taught last week. We also gave Emily one of those Book of Mormon's and she really likes it! We'll see how things go - hopefully we can get them coming to church and progressing. It was cool to see something click with Ofelia as we were teaching her. She finally realized exactly what the Book of Mormon was and was 100% committed to reading it. She kept saying she was going to read it this time. "You'll see!"
So that's about it for the week! We're gearing up for a Miracle May!! Pray for it - it'll happen!
~ Elder Carlson
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