Familia y Amigos!
Qué tal?
This week has been awesome like all the rest! First, of all, thanks for the letters! They are such a boost during the day.
So on Thursday night this past week, Elder Peña and I baptized our first investigator! Not really, but we have been teaching him (our teacher) for a month now and we had the opportunity to do the baptismal interview questions with him and once he can answer all of those, it counts as a baptism! His name is Silvio and he is from Argentina(where my teacher served his mission). I felt so much love for him during this whole month teaching him and preparing things to talk about with him, but never have I felt anything like I did when we were able to talk about the baptismal interview questions and what this means for him. I was full of love! Way more than I had capacity to feel. That's when I knew that I was feeling the love that Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus Christ, have for him. What an experience! I have since thought all about how that powerful, potent, pure love I felt for Silvio is the same way our Heavenly Father feels about all of His children. So we then talked to our teacher about the real Silvio. He said that he is doing great in Argentinaas a member of the Church and is a Gospel Doctrine teacher in Mendoza. The Fernandez's (Raul mainly) would be happy to know that I am slowly picking up a Castillano accent. Its sweet! And our new investigator from Argentinawho we just started teaching is named Raul!
Last night, our Tuesday night devotional speaker was Elder Shayne M. Bowen of the Seventy. He is the one who spoke about is young son who died when he was three in General Conference just a week ago. He talked about so many great things, but the takeaway for me was WORK. He talked about the formula for miracles (obedience + work=miracles) and how we must become expert planners and constantly be finding others to teach. I thought it was cool because it also has application with Spanish. Missionary work is like any other. It is a confusing mix of manual labor and spiritual wrestling. It takes so much more effort mentally, than mowing the lawn or pulling weeds. And it takes so much more effort physically, than simply writing a talk or preparing a lesson. It is awesome! But in Spanish their are two words for the word 'work' in English. 'Trabajo' is a sort of physically, job like work and 'obra' is a sort of spiritual, mental work. I like it a lot because it separates the work a missionary does as 'la obra de misionero', rather than 'trabajo de misionero'. This work is "laboring in the Lord's vineyard for the salvation of the souls of men." I am grateful to be a part of it and to be here in the MTC, learning just how to go about it effectively! This is the only Church on the Earth that is in the express likeness of the Church that Jesus Christ established during His mortal ministry. It is founded on prophets and apostles the same, who have the same keys and authority that was given by Christ to His original twelve apostles. This priesthood authority was restored through Joseph Smith, a true prophet who has sealed his work like many great prophets before him--in his blood. I love this gospel. I love my Savior. I love all of you for helping me develop this love over the years! Let us all press on!!!
-Elder McGinn
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Elder Seth McGinn
MTC Mailbox #216
IA-DMOIN 1114
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604
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