Well another week past and the Christmas bells are ringing. People love Christmas here! It´s so great!
I feel like I talk about the weather entirely too much in my emails but listen... It´s getting worse... hahaha. I love it. Every Friday we have dinner a members house´, his name is Olec he is from Ukraine. Anywho so we go there with the elder´s for dinner every Friday. This Friday we met up at the chapel to walk over to his house, the whole day had been and off and on drizzle, like a throwback to my Seattle life. As we left the chapel for our 10 minute walk to Olec´s house, the rained started to pick up and got progressively worse, we all had our rain gear on but still rain seemed to be winning against our trench coats and umbrellas, we were laughing enjoying the rain talking about how funny it is to be a missionary in this unfortunate weather... but then it really started getting worse. We had to walk under the edges of buildings that don´t have gutters, waterfalls of water gushing on our shoulders.... we rounded the corner to Olec´s street and then came the flood.... The water poured down harder than a Friday afternoon in Tennessee. It was not just raining cats and dogs it was raining cattle and moderately sized dinosaurs. We tried to find a path with less water, but the Storm drains we over flowing and there was a solid 2 inches of water rushing down the road. It was incredible I have never seen anything like it. When we arrived at Olec´s house we stepped into his entry and poured the water out of our shoes. I still can´t believe he let us in....
And the waves.... I thought we had seen waves before. But now I know where fantasia was filmed... here in my area.
But on a more spiritual note, This week we witnessed a huge miracle. The week of thanksgiving, the Elder´s called us with a reference. They met a man at the Hospital who had spoken with missionaries in the past and had been waited years for them to stop by. Turns out he lives on our side of the island. So we gladly took Carlos´s information..
´´Where does he live?´´ I asked
´´´Well thats the thing..`` responds elder Blair
´´Where does Carlos live, Elder?´´ I asked with a little bit of hesitation
´´Nordeste!´´ Responds Elder Blair, I could hear the smile in his voice.
Let me explain. It is very simple. Nordeste is approximately 2 hours away by bus. Irma Morrison and I have not ventured more than 20 minutes by buss in our area. Our area is massive, massive I tell you.
But we decided to give him a call and see if he was really interested in hearing about the Gospel. So I called and talked to Carlos. He is a 65 year old man who lives in some type of old folks establishment and was so kind and really wanted us to come visit him. So we had figured out a day to that we could set aside to go visit Carlos, and marked an appointment. A few days later we really thought about the time and money we would have to spend to make it out to Nordeste, and decided to call Carlos and invite him to come to Church this Sunday. He said that he had been to church before and that he would think about coming this Sunday. I was pretty sure that meant no, but I told him we would call to remind him on Saturday. When I called Saturday night he said he already had it arranged to get on the bus and that he would be there.
I was shocked. I thought that he had forgotten about our invite earlier in the week. But he already had a plan to go! WOO HOO!
When we got to church, we waited in the front hall greeting the members as they came in, starting time was approaching and no sign of Carlos. In fact we didn´t even know what he looked like (the elders did). So we went in and Sacrament meeting started, 30 minutes into the meeting the back door open and this elderly man with hand crutches slides in the back door, sits down and shakes hands with the member sitting next to him. Elder Mateer looks at me with big eyes and looks back at me and mouths the name: ´´CARLOS!``
It was Carlos. He showed up. He came all the way from Nordeste. After the first meeting I went up and introduced myself to him. Shook his hand and introduced him to every member that walked by and I said ``This is Carlos he is visiting today, he came all the way from Nordeste!!!!´´ Well we decided that took a whole lot of faith to travel all the way from Nordeste, so we told him that we could find a way to make it to Nordeste this week to visit him and teach him more about the Gospel. We are super excited. We teach people that live a few blocks from the Church that just don´t care enough to make it to church, and then there are those ´´Carlos from Nordeste´´ kind of people, who are looking for the truth and care enough to make the trip.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is True and it will change Carlos´s life, if he lets it.
I love you all and hope that this week is a good one. Feliz Natal.
Irma McCrery
