Sunday, June 24, 2012

Taryn's Baptism

Today I was privileged to baptize my friend and co-worker Taryn (pronounced terr-in).  It was a miraculous and faith promoting experience on many levels.  When I was at BYU planning my summer it was one of the desires of me heart that I would able to do missionary work with real people.  I remember praying that maybe I'd be able to be part of helping to convert someone to the gospel.  But at the time I felt it was more of a dream than a possibility.  I never thought it would really happen and even more amazing was that it was almost too easy.  I didn't have to do much at all.  I was just lucky/inspired enough to say the right thing at the right time.

Left to right: Elder Larson, Taryn, me, Gina, Elder Free

Camp Moroni







Our stake was asked to man the "water hole" up at Camp Moroni this past week.  So the stake young men's president searched everywhere for people with life guarding experience.  There wasn't much success in that so he went to searching for YSA's who knew how to swim.  So I got to be a volunteer lifeguard for 2 days!  Here's the evidence.  We were either working hard or hardly working (but we did actually save some lives...).

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Missionary work for live people!!!

I haven't taken any pictures and I don't like blogging without them.  But I know all of you have noticed the inactivity in the better newsletter so here's a good story.  I shared it through an e-mail with possibly my last companion that is still in the mission field.  It's full of miraclincidences.


Elder Pena!!!

Do I have a cool story for you.  Bust first off, today I went with my dad to give a talk to another ward in our stake.  He's in the high counsel and I get to go with him as his companion to speak about once a month.  I talked about Elder Bednar's last general conference talk about the Priesthood.  I taught how to get the power if the priesthood in our lives.  I shared about the time when this one lady in Prosperidad gave me advice on how to finish my mission and it bothered me because she never served a mission and you said "elder, that's pride" and I wanted to punch your face in but didn't.  So you're famous now and I love you for teaching me that.

So here's my story.  It all started on day working at McDonald's.  This girl got to work and she was upset.  I was on break and she was telling another girl about her problems.  I was there and near the end of my break I talked to her a bit.  Her name is Teryn.  One thing I told her is that she swears a lot andI asked her if she ever tried to quit swearing. She said she tried but never had success at it.  I never imagined that anything special would come out of this experience.

Fast forward to last Sunday.  The mission president of our mission just happened to be in my ward.  It's a big deal when this happens and I was excited to hear from him.  I learned from my mission that when a mission president speaks it's a really good idea to pay attention.  He took up the third hour of church and combined relief society and priesthood together.  Guess what he spoke about.  He showed the members how to make Mormon.org profiles.  He taught us about things that "work when you sleep."  Both mormon.org and the Book of Mormon can do work for you while you're not even there or around.  So in the end he invited all the members to create a mormon.org profile (I already had one, but I did update it this week) and he had a box of copies of the Book of Mormon for us to take.  So naturally I took one without any person at all in my mind of who I would give it to.  In the back of my mind I was going to do the easy thing and write my testimony in it and go out with the Elders and give it to an investigator they had found.  That was my plan.

Fast forward a few more days and I was at work about to leave when this girl Teryn asked if she could ask me something.  Being at work and all I thought it was weird and the only reason I could think that she would want to talk to me would be to ask if I could work for her one day and cover a shift.  But she threw me a curve ball when she asked if I could help her to stop cursing.  She wanted to stop cursing because she was going to meet her boy friend's family this week ad they are really religious and she didn't want to offend them.  So I asked her if she was praying and she said yes and I asked her if she was reading the scriptures and she wasn't.  She asked if this old Bible that she has would work but that was when I remembered my Book of Mormon.  So I got her number and told her I would give it to her the next time we worked together.

She usually works nights and I usually work early morning until like 2 or 3.  So we only worked together a few times.  It just so happened that this week I worked Friday night 8 to 1 am.  It seemed at first like a huge error on part of the girl who does the scheduling because on Saturday I was scheduled to work from 5:45 am until 2 pm.  So I was supposed to go home and sleep for 4 hours and go do an 8 hour shift.  But what seemed like and error was really a miracle.  We worked together and I gave her the Book of Mormon with my testimony in it.  The manager also let me go home early when I told her I had work again really early.  

So that felt really good.  Let's fast forward to today.  I went to a ward that is 80 minutes away by driving to speak with my dad in sacrament meeting.  We came home and ate dinner and I went to take my Sunday nap.  For some reason I put my phone from silent mode to vibrate mode before I fell asleep.  I woke up from my nap to my phone going off in my pocket and it was Teryn.  She was an emotional mess.  She was crying and a lot was going on, especially boy friend troubles.  So we talked and I mostly listened.  After she had calmed down I asked her if she had been reading and she read until chapter 4.  I asked her if she would like to meet with the missionaries and she said yes.  Her parents don't like visitors so I went and brought her to my house.  Ironically this same night I was planning on going out with the missionaries anyways.  So they came over and my mom participated and we talked about the atonement and they invited her to be baptized on June 30th.

The saddest part is that she lives about 10 miles away from me and that means she lives in another stake.  So it was a great one time lesson and referral for my elders.  But I have the elders' number for the ward she lives in and we're having a lesson at the church over there on Wednesday.  Who knows? Maybe this other ward will have a cute YSA girl for me to marry :) haha.

Well, I hope you liked my story.  I'll be sure to let you know how it ends.  It's really nice to be able to serve the lord through living people.  For the last 8 months I got to help dead people on a weekly basis in Utah.  It feels good to help the living.

I love you Elder Pena.  I hope you English is doing great.  You should understand this all.  

Well I hope this story of mine inspires you to be a better person.