Irene Missed Us!

This week has flown by!! Seriously. The time is ticking... my mission is not finished!! I still have work to do!! And it doesn’t help that my family is throwing trunky comments at me left and right. hahahaha.

So no rain at all. No hit from Irene. Charleston and Myrtle Beach got evacuated though. hahaha I have already missed some crazy adventures in the office.

We are driving a car. Thanks for the letter Ben. You are hilarious.

It's been a good week. We are working with a part member family. J married into the L family. The L’s are recent converts who were baptized in Washington and just moved out here. J plays in a Mexican band. He is awesome. He is really smart and looks like a movie star. He really likes church. Sister L works every Sunday, but he still brings the kids to church.

Alright I have a cool story....

On Thursday Elder Aguilar and I went to this trailer park to call on people. After we left, later that night, we were doing our daily planning and we got a phone call. The number was saved in our phone as M C... so obviously the previous missionaries knew who he was. I answered and this really nice guy is on the other line. He said that he saw us in his trailer park that day and was asking why we didn't come and visit him. hahaha I was like... well... I don't really know who you are. I explained that we were new in the area. I asked if he went to church, he told me no because he had an accident. He wanted us to come and visit the next day.

We went over and knocked on the door. No answer. Honestly the whole thing was a little eerie. Especially when we went to go and knock on some of the other doors of the trailer - there were wheelchair ramps all over the place. We found a side porch with a ramp leading up to it and a HUGE door. we knocked it and this guy came to the door. I thought he was M and he said "Just a minute." So we waited there for like 10 minute - I was so confused.

He then let us in and I suddenly realized that he wasn't M. The room we went into was small and the majority of it was taken up by a hospital bed. Sitting the bed was M. He is from Mexico and is paralyzed. About 5 years ago the missionaries knocked on his door and he was pretty rude to them. A few months later he was drinking and driving and got in a serious accident and is now paralyzed. After a while he invited the missionaries back and for the last five years he has studied the gospel.

He can move his arms a little bit, but he only has full use of this head. He speaks fine and is very bright. He does everything with his mouth - he writes. he has a phone that is propped up in front of him that he uses a pencil in his mouth to dial etc...

He uses the same pencil to flip through the scriptures to read them. He just sits there. It is unbelievable.

M has a strong testimony of the gospel and wants to be baptized. He told us that he was baptized Catholic and grew up Catholic. He said that he realizes it’s not correct and does not want to be Catholic anymore. He knows the church is true and wants to become a part of it.

I talked to my district leader and he said that missionaries have worked with him for five years. He has only been able to come to church twice as it's just hard to get him there. In one of our lessons with him, he said that another reason is because that he doesn't always trust every set of missionaries to take him out of the house. M told us that he trusted us from the moment he called that night.

M is on date to be baptized on Sept 17th. The hard part is now to get him to church. His family has a van but the dad uses it for work. We don't know what to do. But we will get him there. We are also gaining favor with the family, they apparently haven’t been very receptive. We taught his sister last night and she is pretty interested.

PLEASE pray for M and his family. We need a miracle.

I love you guys!!!

Elder Stoneman