THE BIG MIRACLE - March 15, 2010

o love to hear all the news. hope pepper comes back! i love to hear that you've been able to get more on top of your RS lessons. i think if we focus on our church callings more we are not only more blessed but more in tune with the spirit which is something WE ALL need. we don't eat in the members houses, we accept little snacks if we are passing by but its not too sanitary here so we´re advised not to. we have now been training all the members in the new plan that Elder Tom Perry presented and its helping us not knock doors and work solely with member references. its not totally in effect yet but we are seeing a change and will see a lot more success every day. but as far as my news for you all...my companion has improved a lot after interviews we had last week as a zone. the mission also just completely reorganized and we had emergency changes last week and we went from 13 zones in the mission to 9. i like it better because our zones were getting smaller. THE BIG MIRACLE:so last week the plans for manuel and lucy were to get married friday an hour north in guadalupe where it was gonna be cheaper and not too far. thursday night came along and we were waiting to give them the last instructions on were they needed to go with their witnesses and we call the elders up in guadalupe and they tell us that the mayor who has to realize the whole deal hadnt returned from his trip to lima but that he would friday afternoon so saturday morning would be better. we let manuel and lucy know all that and manuel had asked for friday and saturday off of work and so friday he had nothing to do so us 4 elders went with the mission leader and an awesome convert of one month (mario) went and helped all morning til 1 making adobe so they could get the most out of the lost time from work. friday night comes around and the elders up north call us and tell us that the mayor didnt know anything about it so he wasnt liking the idea, and monday would be the soonest he could realize the marriages. we didnt know what to do so we panicked and called our zone leaders asked if there were any mass marriages in trujillo saturday(13th of march) and 30 minutes later they said the soonest in anywhere in the mission would be the 20th in trujillo. at 10:30 we all decided to kneel down together the 4 of us and say a prayer to ask for the Lord to help us find a solution to this problem so that Manuel and Lucy could be blessed and not live in sin. we kept calling and got permission to call old areas and ideas we had and in the end after 92348752093 calls we heard of a bishop in Las Robles ward in trujillo who had a friend who is a registrator (dont know if thats a word in english). so we call him although its 11.30 and his wife said he was sleeping but to call at 7 in the morning. so we go to bed a little sad but still with the faith to know there was a way. we all wake up, exercise, and call at 7 in point, and the guy like nothing says, yeah sounds good i can do it at 11 in trujillo in the Esperanza Stake Center(mind you esperanza means HOPE!) we call right after to our zone leaders with the good news, and then up north to tell the elders to rush down to us to give us the papers that we had sent there for the marriage and they got here at 10 with everything. we rushed to manuel and lucy and they went and got ready and we sent them off at 11 when they were supposed to be in trujillo...but we called the guy who was gonna do the marriage and he said it was fine he would arrive at 12. we thought everything was good then, and we relaxed enough to eat lunch, then headed to the chapel to fill the baptismal faunt and what do you know, Satan didnt give up! the water stopped at about 10 inches and there was no more...so we thought, we called the sister who does cleaning and she came and miraculously fixed the pump so that we could continue filling it and in the end it got about 3/4 filled when he finally got baptized. just want to share my testimony that i know that Satan and the opposition is real, and that we need to keep up the faith and be diligent until the very last moment! hope you can all enjoy this short story and feel my gladness. love and miss you all.