Conversion

I really don´t have the words to describe this week. It´s probably better if I just give you the whole story.

Tuesday we had zone conference. We´ve now hit a new point of Preach My Gospel. Starting in May of next year, the curriculum at the MTC will be altered. Preach My Gospel will still be the basis, but the focus will be more leaned to better ourselves as teachers. However, from this point on, all our capacitations will be based on this principle of being better gospel teachers. We saw a lot of that in President Gálvez´s capacitation Tuesday. A few other things have changed as well. We will now only be having zone conference every 3 months, and interviews with President will be the month following zone conference. In other words, Tuesday was my final zone conference in the mission. Interviews aren´t until August 31st. Two of my good mission buddies, Elder Mitton from Pocatello and Elder Winward from Salt Lake, gave their final testimonies in the conference. I´ve known them both since the MTC, and it´s was kind of unreal to see them giving their final testimonies knowing I´m next.
On that note, there´s been one major change. This group that leaves in a few weeks will be the last group to go home on a Tuesday. We´re the only mission in central america who holds their changes meetings on Mondays, and the Area Seventies said to change it. So starting with my group, changes meetings will be Wednesday, and because President Gálvez wants those leaving to be present in changes meeting, those going home won´t leave until Thursday. So you´re going to need to add two days onto the countdown, because I won´t be getting home until September 30th.

Now that´s just the news part of my letter. Now for the miracle part of it.

About a month and a half ago, a man named Franklin Mendoza found our branch secretary and asked if he could send us (the missionaries) to visit him. To give you some background on this man, he use to be an evangelical pastor. But to many of those in San Vito, he was more than just a pastor, a lot of people saw him as a prophet. About a year ago he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, on which they operated but he was still declared terminal. His health as decreased ever since, preventing him from continuing his practice as a pastor. With that, he was somewhat exiled from the church he once presided over, and realizing something was wrong, he began to look for something to fill the void he felt within him. Due to his health, his wife ended up leaving him, and he was left to fend for himself and his 3 sons. After talking with a member of the church on a bus, he was told to speak with our secretary, Hermano Chinchilla. The first time we met with him, he told us he was going to San José within a few days, and that the doctors were going ot amputate his leg due to an infection that had occured due to the cancer. We didn´t teach any straight lesson, we simply answered his questions the best we could, after the which he asked us if we could give him a blessing. After the blessing, I gave him a Book of Mormon with a chapter marked that he could read, and a number he could call to contact us. I also gave him the number to the missionaries in the area he would be staying in San José.
A few weeks later, I felt the impression we needed to visit him again. We weren´t even sure if he had returned from San José, but we called the Hermano Chinchilla and went. Franklin was there, and he hadn´t received surgery yet due to some complications in his divorce that wouldn´t permit him to leave town quite yet. He told us he had been reading in the Book of Mormon, and that he didn´t understand why people were so against it since everything he had read so far was exactly what he had been searching for since his illness began. Once again, he told us that he would hopefully be leaving for San José in a few days but that he would meet with the missionaries as soon as he left the hospital. That was on July 7th.
Friday morning I was seated out on the porch studying, when Elder Centeno came out with the phone. He told me that Franklin had called, that he was close by and that he wanted to speak with us. We met with Franklin outside the apartment, and he told us that once again his divorce had delayed his surgery, but that Sunday morning he would be leaving. Without any further hesitation, he asked us what he had to do be baptized before he left. All he needed was the desire and the faith, of which I could tell he had both. Prior to speaking with us, he had separated himself from the woman he had been living with knowing it was necessary to "be right with God" as he put it. He said he had no doubt in his mind that this was what he needed to do.
Not an hour later we were on a bus for Ciudad Neilly. We brought one of the district leaders in the zone to San Vito, and we had Franklin´s baptismal interview Friday night. He made the statement that he might not know a whole lot about the church as a whole, but he had gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon, and he knew it was true.
Sunday morning, August 1, 2010 at 7:30 in the morning, I had to previleged to baptize Franklin Mendoza. He was later confirmed and able to partake of the sacrament before leaving for San José and the surgery that awaited him. But before he left, he said he felt at peace.

There are times in the mission where you question if you´re doing all you can, and if you feel you are, then why aren´t the good things coming? Then an experience like this comes along, and you have to humble yourself for having forgotten to have patience, and feeling blessed to have had part in such a conversion of faith.

Franklin entered the hospital in San José this morning. If you could keep him in your prayers, I would be deeply grateful.

I hope you´re all doing alright and enjoying the few weeks of summer vacation that are left. I love you all.

Tu Hijo,
Elder Nunie