A wonderful week in Clinton

Hey guys! It was a great week in the Utah Ogden mission! Every single day, I love my mission more and more! It was a blast! Since tomorrow is transfer day, we got the news today. Elder Kelley and I are staying together in Clinton! We are so happy. We have a lot of people who are super close to being baptized! It is so exciting. Another really awesome thing is that Elder Zarse (my trainer) is coming down to the area next to mine. He will be in my district. How crazy is that!

Last Sunday, James Wales got a recommend to go do baptisms for the dead. The best thing about this is that President Hiers just announced that we can go to any of the temples from Salt Lake up to Logan/Brigham City as long as we go with a recent convert that is doing baptisms for the dead for the first time or getting their endowments for the first time. Elder Kelley and I are thinking about trying to James to go to the Bountiful temple with us. I would LOVE to see the Bountiful temple. It is so beautiful! James is doing super well. He has been going to church every week and he is en route for getting sealed to his wife, Rubelyn, in the temple. It is so AWESOME!

So we had something super crazy happen this week. A set of Sisters sent us a referral and we went and contacted him. His name is Langston. He is an awesome guy. He is 19 years old but has a kid so he is not YSA age. He wanted us to come back every single day so we can teach him. We taught him the first three lessons and committed him to baptism on March 29. But something SO crazy happened. We went to Ward Council and it was the ward that Langston is in. We brought his name up and the bishop asked us where he lived. We showed him where Langston lives on our iPad and the first thing he said, "That's not in our ward... That is not even in our stake.."!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It turns out that the fence next to Langston's house is the stake boundary! So we had to give him away to a different set of missionaries. It was so disappointing. But this whole experience was a trial of our faith. We kept having faith that we were going to get new investigators this past week. That same night, we were at this dinner appointment and at the spiritual thought, we asked for referrals and guess what?!?!?! Two of the kids that are present isn't BAPTIZED!! One is 12 yrs old and I think the other one is 9 yrs old. That event made all of the tracting we did all worth it. It was an incredible night! I love being a missionary! 

We had a crazy event happened this week! This lady named Heather called us and wanted us to come over and teach her nonmember kid. Before we went over, we talked to the WML in her ward and he told us that Heather is not baptized because of her fear of water. We went over and it was this FIVE YEARS OLD boy that wants to have missionary discussions. He had so many questions and one of them was, "Why did God kick out Satan?". The parents couldn't answer them all so they had us come over and answer questions. It was super hard trying to explain the Plan of Salvation to a five years old kid. I learned a lot though and I am super grateful for that opportunity. If I can teach that lesson to a five years old, then that means, I'm doing something right. :) But we did commit the parents to taking the lessons (the husband is a less active and Heather is nonmember). It is going to be so AWESOME!

Thank you all for reading this and have a wonderful week! Stay strong because the gospel is true, I know it!Man, I love the gospel so much! It brings so much peace and happiness to those that have it. Here is a CHALLENGE for y'all (we ate dinner with a family from Alabama and they said y'all so much and it got Elder Kelley and I saying it too. When other people found that we were from Cali and AZ respectively, they gave us weird looks. They thought we were from TX or the South. hahaha): Will YOU find one person for the missionaries to start teaching? That challenge may sound scary but I promise YOU that when you open your mouths, the Lord will help you. When we get out of our comfort zone, we grow and that is one of the purposes of life. To grow and have experiences. What an amazing plan!

I love you all and have a great week! (Sorry, this email is so short, we are short on time. we have so much to do! :D ) Love, Elder McGrath