We had a great experience last night with the couple we're teaching whose son left for his mission two weeks ago. Last week we talked a lot with his Mom, Rosa, about the Book of Mormon and marked several different parts for her to read (she's already in Second Nephi on her own, but we marked some other special parts we thought she might like) and invited her to pray about it and ask if it's true. She said she would.
When we went back last night we asked her how the reading went, and if she had said a prayer to ask. She told us that on Thursday afternoon she grabbed the Book of Mormon and sat down to read it. She read the parts that we marked and started saying a prayer to ask the Lord if what she was reading was true. Before she had even finished the prayer her dog started barking so she got up to see what it was. She went to the front door and saw that the mail had arrived, and when she grabbed it she saw that her son had written her a letter from the mission. In the letter he talked about everything he was learning in the mission, bore his testimony about the church, and said how happy and excited he was to see his family progress in the gospel. I told her she couldn't have gotten a response any clearer than that.
We managed to mark a baptismal date for her and her husband for the 24th of May, though her husband was a little bit more reluctant. He hasn't read the Book of Mormon yet, but said that he would.
On Saturday we're going there and we're going to watch "Joseph Smith: The Prophet" at their house with some members.
We're teaching a guy named Dirceu, and he has stood us up three Sundays in a row. He still hasn't gone to church. We went there on Sunday night to see what happened, and basically with the intention of letting him know that we weren't going to be passing by anymore to teach him, but when we got to his house and started talking to him he started talking about "a problem" that he has. He didn't go into details, but by the questions I asked and the way he answered them basically what we figured out is that he didn't just use drugs, but he also trafficked them, and that when he went to leave for church on Sunday morning the people that he used to work with started giving him trouble. He didn't want to go into details because his family was present, so we marked with him to go to a member's house that's a friend of his tonight for him to tell us the whole story. He will be baptized on the 24th by this friend of his if everything works out right.
On Sunday night before we talked to our families we watched a Fireside Transmission from BYUI with Elder Bednar. I thought it was cool that he talked from the same stage that I played guitar on once.
Welp, I'll talk to you all next week.
Elder Sisco