He knows your voice

Familia y Amigos,

Hey there! It's already December and we still don't have any snow! haha woo hoo. That makes it nice for us missionaries because we can still drive our cars. But, I'm sure we will see snow here soon. Anyway, I hope you all had a great week. I first want to say Congratulations! to my little brother Jordan who got baptized this last weekend. I'm very proud of you and for that big decision you have made. I hope you had a great experience! And also, congratulations to the AFXC team! Man, I'm so proud of you guys too. 2nd in the Nation... that is amazing. AFXC is only getting better. wow.

This past week, H and P got baptized, and man I'm so excited for them. They were baptized on my little brother Jordan's birthday, and that is a day I will always remember. H and P were SO excited. It made me laugh to see the excitement of P. Apparently at school that day, he went around telling all of his friends and teachers that he was going to get baptized! haha He's already spreading the Gospel and he wasn't even baptized yet. Anyway, we ended up having the baptismal service in Kearney, because they don't have a baptismal font in Holdrege. But that didn't keep people from coming. There was a great group that came to support H and Pand that made it so much better. After a few talks were given and we went to the baptismal font, somehow, the water in the font had gone down a whole step so we were like, "Oh boy!" But, it all worked out. For H, it took us 4 times to baptize her until she finally went completely under the water...but that turned out to be great for the testimony meeting afterwards.

I would say my favorite part of the baptismal service was the testimony meeting after the baptisms. For those of you who didn't already know, P is obsessed with this "Penguin" game that he plays. It is really hilarious and he would always talk about it in each of our lessons. Anyway, I had the opportunity to share my testimony and I shared the one thing I knew about penguins...which is that with every penguin, they all have a differenct voice/call. Likewise, we all are unique and have different abilities. And just like how a mama penguin knows the voice of her penguinees (haha not sure how to say baby penguins), our Heavenly Father knows our name and our voice. God is our loving Heavenly Father. And then P told me of an experience he had the other day. He said that his friend at school lost his red pen, so P prayed for his friend that he could find his pen. And the next day at school, he found it. P is a great example to me and has a strong testimony that God answers and hears our prayers.

On Saturday, we got an emergency phone call from a member moving from Iowa to a place called North Platte, NE and his U-Haul had flipped on its side as they were traveling. Anyway, to make a long story short, we helped this man fix his tires on his car and then his family got a ride with a member to North Platte to their new home. However, later that night, we got a call from him again saying that he needed our help to move his stuff from his U-Haul to a different trailer. Well, when we met him at the towing place, the manager there told him that he had to play money in order to get his stuff. And they charged this guy $1709 to tow his U-Haul trailer 8 miles. It was unbelievable. But my heart was broken when I heard this guy from South Korea and speaking broken English, just begging the manager of this towing business to lower the price because he didn't have any money and no insurance. Well, to make a long story short, the manager made him pay $1200 to get his stuff and we helped him unload his U-Haul. As we were doing that, we opened up the U-Haul door and the door caught onto a piece of his bag of rice. The rice started falling to the ground and he said, "No, no, no, no, my rice!" I grabbed a plastic bag and then we scooped his rice back into the bag. I felt so bad for this guy...and you could tell he didn't have much. And then, as we helped him unload his truck, several times we heard him say: "Oh man, this broke." But towards the end of unloading his trailer something really cool happened. Among all the things that had broken in the accident, he pulled out two pictures from the middle of the trailer. One was of Jesus CHrist and the other one was of the Temple. Somehow neither one of these pictures were scratched or broken one bit. That was a testimony to me. And really, from this experience I learned that God knows us by name, he loves us, and he is watching over us. Thankfully, this man soon got home to his family in North Platte and I wish him the best!

Not a scratch on these two beauties!

And also this week, Elder Harker and I prayed asking the Lord to help us find someone or a few people by Saturday evening who are prepared and willing to come to church and want to be baptized. As a result, we had an older Hispanic lady named T at church and she wants to be baptized. We truly believe that was a true miracle. However, we later found out after church that she is going to California for a few weeks to visit family for Christmas. So, hopefully we can send the missionaries to her out in California. And we received a few more member referrals this week and one of them said they want to be baptized, so there are miracles happening here and we are really excited!

But it's been a great week, and we are looking forward to another one. I hope you all have a great week as well. Love you all and thanks so much for your support!

 

Love,

Elder Vawdrey