Happy Thanksgiving Dad :)

This week was about as mission as it gets. And I'm going to explain it to ya'll! First off... bad news.... I'M GETTING FAT. Ah I'm starting to get a belly just like Dad! We just eat sooooooooo much crap here, like so much. So it's really hard to eat healthy and we don't have the materials to get a whole lot of exercise. But I refuse to get too fat :)

Alright I got some dang good experiences from this week. First off, Elias. He is a guy that we found our first day here in this area. He is honestly one of the nicest guys I know! But like most Nicaraguans, kinda hard to work with and kinda hard for him to keep commitments. With the two weeks out of the field, it was really hard because he hadn't gone to church! When Elder Castro and I got back into the field, we decided that we'd try one more time with him. And by some miracle, he went to church! That week we decided we needed to teach him about the Word of Wisdom, but he had SOOOO MANY QUESTIONS about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. And he's got daughters who are always asking questions, so it was really hard to teach him about that stuff. It came to the 15th of November, and I said "If he wants to get baptized on the 29th we have to teach him about smoking". We knew it was not a great chance that he'd be able to quit like that, but we had to at least try! That night we taught him a little about Joseph Smith and then talked about smoking. He only smoked like 2 or 3 a night but said it was an addiction. AND HE QUIT JUST LIKE THAT. And then the next night we put a baptismal date for him for the 29th and his daughter for the 6th of December. It really was so cool! But that's not even the miracle.

So on Wednesday we decided we probably needed to teach him about coffee. And here we go with the whole mission thing. We went and taught him, and he basically told us that it wasn't going to happen. He knows we're men of God and understands that it come from God, but he just told us that it's been a tradition for his whole life and it'd be just too hard. I was heartbroken. Wednesday was one of the toughest nights of my life. From the first step I took outside of his house, I was in a fast for him. I fasted and prayed all day. I went back the next night with Elder Naisbitt and... he had completely and 100% changed. Literally a complete flip of attitude. That night he told us that he doesn't even want to drink coffee, just that it was hard to resist from all his peers at work. That day he drank four little cups, and he hasn't drunk since. Now we're planning on all 4 people of that family to get baptized. I can't even describe what happened. I am so grateful for the Lord and that blessing. Elias should get baptized this week!

But... I'm on a mission, so of course there are those downs also. Friday we had a super, super powerful lesson with a lady that wants to get baptized but wants to wait til January til her kids come. And that just doesn't happen in this mission :) we didn't have a plan going into the lesson, but we literally just completely followed the Spirit. And by the end, she was crying, I was crying, my companion was crying, we all were! Super cool. And Saturday.... we were scheduled to have three baptisms. Wismar who I didn't even know because he was completely from the APs, Mayling who is super cool, and Brian, the kid that we found by a miracle! Wismar got baptized in the afternoon. We went to pick up Brian, and he wasn't there. He hid from us all night. We later found out that it was because he drank coffee on Friday, but I can honestly say Saturday was the hardest, worst day of my entire life. I have developed an absolute love for these people and a desire to help them enter into the kingdom of heaven. All night I was thinking "because of my lack of obedience and hard work, someone isn't going to be able to open up the doors to the kingdom of heaven today." Yeah it sucked. I am still heartbroken for him, but we're gonna work to get it done! I have been so humbled here. I have realized so many weaknesses, and am starting to put every ounce of who I am to the Lord, because he is my only hope here.

Other than that, everything it great! Ya'll already know how grateful I am for each and every one of you guys. Seriously thank you so much for everything! And Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,

Elder Merrill