I am doing well and I love being a missionary!

Hola!!!

How are you all! Thanks for the email and thanks for the letter chip! I hope you all had a wonderful b-day, ski day and BYU. Things are going well here, lets see how much I can write in the 26min I have left.

You are right mom, I haven't talked about the people in a while. Which is funny because they are all the reasons why I am even here. So an update. We are teaching a man named Orlando from Ecuador. Its quite miraculous how we began teaching him. When I first got to flushing, and Sis Reid left, I was almost scrambling trying to quickly learn who everyone was that they were teaching. The missionaries before me were teaching another man Orlando, so I called the Orlando that was in the phone.......turns out it was the wrong Orlando, but I didn't put that together till we already had an appt with him! Of course we kept it but for 3 weeks straight our appts with him fell through, 1st my comp was sick, 2nd the snowstorm hit, then he changed his phone number and we didn't have a complete address so we completely lost contact. We prayed that he would call us again and He did!!! We set up another appt, but he wasn't there and the member we had called couldn't come (so even if he had been there, we probably couldn't teach him anyway. (we can't enter homes where there isn't a woman). So as we walked home, disappointed, we felt prompted to go back and talk to some of the people we had passed by and failed to fearless so we did. As we were walking back to the church again, we came to the exact same spot that we were prompted to turn around before and Orlando called us!! He said he was sorry he missed us and invited us to come back. We said turned around again and said a prayer of thanks and that there would be a woman there so we could enter. We got there and there was! He has two 20 year old sons and they had a college friend over. We taught the Restoration and gave Him a Book of Mormon. His sons and their friend were listening too. After we shared with him the 1st vision, he told us that He felt a power he hadn't felt before that almost gave Him goosebumps. He also said that He had a Mormon friend growing up that always invited him to church, but Orlando never went and never believed what His friend would talk about. He then went on to say, " You mean to tell me that Jesus Christ and the Eternal Father, appeared to Joseph Smith. Why didn't anyone tell me that before???"

And so it began. We have been back 2 times to teach the Plan of Salvation. He has a lot of good questions all of which we have been able to answer by just turning to the Book of Mormon. He is loves how the book CLEARLY answers his questions and how he feels the same way reading it as he does the Bible. His mother overheard what we were teaching in the other room, and came in to ask where in the Bible we were reading from because she could feel power from what we were teaching. We taught her that it was in the Book of Mormon, at this she jumped back and told us that it couldn't be true. Right then, Orlando jumped in and defended the book and talked about how it is a complement to the Bible. It was really neat to see that he understands it. He even told us that at first he was caught on the golden plates and why all 8 witnesses are in a couple families, but now he feels that there is a power that overshadows those doubts and he is beginning to recognize the truth of it all.

Sadly, he didn't come to church yesterday, and we haven't been able to contact him (which is weird because he is usually so responsive) But we are praying hard that we can find what happened.

I love you and miss you all! I am doing well and am loving being a missionary and trainer. Is it hard and taxing, si pero Vale la pena :)

Love

Megan