Feliz Dia dos Pais [Happy Father's
Day]! I love you so much, Dad. I wish I didn't have so much to say
so that I could spend this whole email praising you. Alas.
Vitor is doing great. For the
first time in his life, he found two things that he can do without feeling the
desire to smoke--going to church and listening to our lessons.
He said that he loves writing in his journal, and when he first started a few years ago, he wrote more or less, "My name is Vitor so-and-so.
I'm the author of this book. But I don't want to be rich, and I would
really get annoyed if I ever became famous. So that's not why I'm
writing. I just need to get some words down. Maybe if I can see
clearly where I've been in life, I'll be able to figure out how to change direction. I
need help."
There was one day this week when all
of our investigators surprised us with really weird reactions. When we
asked our new investigator, Carlos (a member's husband), if he would read the
Book of Mormon and pray, he didn't say yes or no. He just laughed.
And when we sat down with Athia's to plan his baptism, he cried. He was
terrified the baptism water would infect his open bed wounds. While I've
never quite been faced with either of those reactions, I think what most caught
me off guard was when we invited Vitor to fast with us, and he said, "Only
24 hours? Sure that'll be a cinch." I love teaching an ex-Marine.
We shared Alma 32:28 with him this
week, about giving place for a little seed of the word of God to enter in your
heart and not casting it off by your unbelief. He said that he thinks he
has already got a seed of faith. I told him that the central message of
the word of God is that he loves you. Vitor has a hard time believing
that he deserves to be cured of his addiction or to be forgiven for the things
he has done. But in reality Christ has already suffered the weight of God's
judgment. Like the army buddies that Victor misses from his Nam days,
Christ is always at our side and he put himself in our place to suffer the penalty
of our sins. All he asks us to do is follow him--stand behind him so we
don't have to suffer the same thing over again. He doesn't like to see us
suffer. ...But Vitor knows that. He surprised us by saying
that he didn't fast to stop smoking, but for the welfare of his own lost son.
One thing I love--LOVE--about the
mission is that you can really tell when someone has prayed about The Book of
Mormon. Their whole countenance changes and they suddenly get a new
excitement to make the most out of their one wild and precious life. When
we saw Athia's smiling face this week, I knew immediately that he had said that
prayer. It was the day after he had cried about baptism, but today his
first words were, "I'd like to get baptized on Sunday, okay?"
But... When it came down to
the weekend, Athia got in an argument with his member friend, Mauricio, because
Athia had planned to go to the theater with friends Sunday night and that's not
appropriate for the Sabbath Day. So on Sunday we pulled the two of them out of
class and had a lesson about the Atonement. It actually went really well, and
the two of them were touched. I believe Athia would have been baptized after
that lesson if it weren't for the fact that he also told us his theater friends,
who are Middle Eastern, offered him coffee, and in their culture it is really
rude to turn down coffee, so he drank a little bit. So we're gonna wait one
more week.
At the end of the lesson I shared
Daniel 3 about how Shad, Mes, and Abed knew that God would save them from Nebs
furnace. I told Athia that, in the same way, I knew that he would be able
to walk again. But these three dedicated men [Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego] said, "But
if not... we will serve the Lord." I asked Athia if he would still
follow Christ's example and be baptized even if God did not heal him. "Well
of course," he answered. Mauricio started crying, and thanked me for
the question. I think the poor guy had been suspecting bad motives of his
friend and was relieved to hear otherwise :)
Love you
Sister Carter
P.S. Mom, I love you too! For some reason those homemade Oreos popped
into my head this morning, and I was like, "Wow I miss Mom." Haha. I can't believe I've survived almost a year
without you guys. That is weird.
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