Coolest 3 Minutes Of My Life

This past week was excellent!  I hope everyone´s week was as good as mine.  Here´s the rundown of what´s going on.

Yesterday, we had 6 investigators at church.  More than I´ve had in one week in a long time.  There is a kid who comes to play soccer with us at the church on Mondays, and we decided to go visit him last week.  We found his house, along with 2 other families that live in the same rental.  They all have 3 or more kids haha.  We decided to gather up their kids and teach them all something, and then ask their parents if we could bring them to church with us on Sunday.  Surprisingly, they said yes haha.  So Sunday morning we rounded up the little rugrats (I mean...children of God ) and took them all to church.  They loved it.  We showed them the video of the Restoration and then sent them off to Primary for the 3rd hour.  They had a blast.  There are even more people in their houses that we want to visit this week (especially their parents).  The parents of some of them went to church 2 or 3 times a few years ago, so that is a great entry point to talk with them.  They´re good kids, I hope to be able to get them in the water so they can grow up in the church environment with the Gospel in their lives before the temptations come too seriously and strongly.  Future missionaries they are :)

Also, we have a baptism this week!  Osvaldo Gonzalez is getting baptized at 6pm on Saturday.  His brother Juan Carlos is going to baptize him.  He has worked so hard to get here, and he has such a strong testimony.  Yesterday during Elders Quorum, the president called him up to the front and gave him an early welcome to the quorum and to the branch.  When he told Osvaldo he could sit down again, he asked to say a few things.  He started talking about how long this journey has been for him and how he has finally found the true church that brings the inner peace that all of us need after looking for so long.  He thanked his brother and his family for their help and patience with him, and then he thanked us for bringing him to the Gospel.  It was really special for me, I wanted to cry haha.  I love that old guy.  He´s soft-spoken and friendly with a warm, gentle persona.  Saturday will be a great day.

Because I am now district leader again, I was able to participate in the leadership training that we had last Tuesday.  It was just amazing.  President Callan taught us before lunch, and he announced that Elder Foster (from the 2nd Quorum of the Seventy and the 2nd councelor in the Area Presidency) was going to come to do the second half of the training.  We about jumped off our seats for excitement.  During lunch, I had put my jacket over a chair next to mine to save a seat for Elder Sellers to be able to talk to him for a little.  When Elder Foster got there, they happened to sit him in the seat next to me that I was saving for Elder Sellers haha.  I got to sit next to him and talk to him for a while.  It was really neat; he is really funny.  He gave a presentation about the 3 ways to do missionary work: missionaries alone, members helping missionaries, and missionaries helping members.  That is ordered from least effective to most effective respectively.  He said that we have essentially reached the maximum church attendance and baptisms we can reach working just missionaries alone.  Now we need to do something to advance to the second level and have the members start helping us.  It was a really great presentation, and he helped us a lot.  It inspired us all.

If that wasn´t cool enough to be able to sit next to and talk with a Seventy/member of the Area Presidency, after the training meeting was over and Elder Foster had finished teaching us everything, he announced that Elder Foster had a few minutes to interview some missionaries and whoever wanted to be interviewed by him should wait outside his office.  Knowing Elder Sellers would have the keys to open the office, I booked it to go find him and walked right behind him and Elder Foster.  I was the first one to get to be interviewed.  I have to tell you, that was probably one of the coolest 3 minutes of my life.  I was scared half to death, but I couldn´t pass up the opportunity haha.  To best describe how Elder Foster is, he´s got the love of Bishop Leavitt and the spirituality of President Callan.  My goodness.  He asked about my family, how much time I had in the mission, and stuff like that.  And after about 30 seconds, he read me like a patriarch.  He told me things about myself and guessed things about me just from talking to me for half a minute.  He gave me some incredible encouragement and advice that is too personal to me to share, but let me tell you, it blew my mind.  That man inspires me, and I know that he is called of God.  I really pray that I´ll be able to meet with him one day again sometime in the future.  If any of you ever have the chance to have an interview with a Seventy, might I highly recommend that you take it.  Haha.  Incredible.

Next week I´ll send pictures of the baptism and tell you all how it was.  I love and miss you all!

-Élder Moore