The Best Day Ever

The Best Day Ever:

Saturday was the best day ever. Of all the days of my mission and possibly my life that was the one I loved the most. Because of the awkwardness of my hands (Ether 12:24) I'm going to have trouble explaining it, please bear with me.

The week had been lame. We were getting at each other's throats and we were low on miles. After resolving our differences Friday night we realized we couldnt be driving all around DFW until Wednesday we had about 33 miles left per day. We had a lesson with Angelique and decided that was the most important thing to do so our plan until dinner was to tract out her entire complex after her lesson. We don't really tract because Africans just kind of mix with every one else and so it's not an effective way of finding them but we didn't have much of a choice.

We showed up at Angelique's around 1pm we knocked and when she answered her smile turned into a frown. "Where's your third guy?" She asked, it became apparent that her 18 year old son was nowhere to be found and so we couldn't enter the house. We quickly tried calling everyone that lived nearby but no one was availible. We tried to do a doorstep lesson with her but she downright  refused saying it was too hot outside, we told her that even if we didn't teach her we'd still be outside but she wouldn't budge. So in a last ditch effort we called a member who lived 20 minutes away and he gladly agreed to help. 

We knocked a few doors and found some people from Ethiopia who spoke something similar to Kunama but didn't seem to like Elder Shiday that much. We also found a lot of people from Afghanistan who we were pretty much powerless to teach because they knew the equivalent of maybe 5 English classes and the only Arabic we knew were some Islamic greetings Elder Shiday had picked up. Fortunately we did have a few Arabic pamphlets Elder Sherrod had found in a closet like a month ago. Unfortunately Arabic is a very squiggly language and you can't just read the words phonetically like Swahili. We had already given away one of the two Arabic Restoration pamphlets we had and as we knocked on the last door this big burly Afghani answered. He was about 6'5" with a shaved head and a thick beard that would make Santa Clause jealous. 

Muslims have never been rude to us but they have never ever let us share our message with them. This guys name was Hyde and he spoke a little bit of English. We introduced ourselves and when he saw the "Jesus Christ" on our name tags he got really excited. Apparently he loved Jesus so much he named his daughter Mary and he let us in. 

We didnt have much time so we gave him a pamphlet and used Google Translate to talk a little bit and promised to return next Saturday. That was a miracle, a Muslim has never wanted to talk with us so badly.

 

While we We're in Hyde's house Angelique kept calling and I was terrified that she was going to cancel on us. When we showed up the member was sitting inside and Sister Julius was also there. We awkwardly took our seats looking a little disorganized as we started with a prayer. It had been over a month since Angeliqe had let us come over. She came to church constantly but never had time for us to come teach her. We followed up on some stuff with her and proceeded open to the Book of Mormon only that was even more disorganized.

We had done our planning in French that morning, and I thought we agreed on Alma 42 while he thought we were doing Alma 32 so that looked really bad in front of everyone. We decided on Alma 42 and started reading. 

Despite a rocky start things actually started to go well. Our testimonies seemed to inspire her and Sister Julius was explaining all this stuff to her in Swahili it was super cool. 

I felt very strongly impressed to invite her to baptism but I kind of just assumed that was my own pride and not the Spirit. Angelique has been on and off about the idea of baptism since day 1 but she's never given us a firm yes. So I tried to ignore it but then I somehow ended up talking about following the example of Jesus Christ and then Elder Shiday invited her to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized and she said yes. 

We wanted to cry we were so happy. The member who looked disgusted with us at first was tearing up as was Sister Julius who was demanding exactly what time her baptism was so she could clear her schedule for that day. August 25th folks, mark it on your calendars.

Je vous aime,

Elder Murdoch

No pictures so here are a few from last week I forgot to send: