An amazing week in Clinton

Hey guys, Thank you so much for the emails that you have sent me. It was a joy reading them! It is so nice to hear about the things happening at home. I'm going to make a big SHOUT OUT to my awesome Dad, who got a job at Saudi Aramco. It was a relief hearing that Aramco will help pay for college! I have been thinking about what to do about it lately. I know I only have been out six months but the rest of my mission will go by fast and I want to be prepared! What a blessing! The Lord truly blesses His servants! :)

So, this week in Clinton has been absolutely amazing. It didn't snow at all and it was raining a little bit. We got sunshine there and there but it was awesome. We didn't have to walk in the bitter cold. I'm grateful for that! :)

Last week, I talked about the surprise party I got and I finally got the picture from one of the missionaries. My hair looked so bad in that picture but I got a haircut that night so it's all good!

My zone has been doing Zone Insanity (Insanity is a two month workout program) and it is going amazing. Elder Kelley (my comp), the Zone Leaders, and the Sisters (there is only a set of sisters in our zone. yes, they came!!) only come. All of the other missionaries are lame because they don't want to wake up at 5:00am to workout... jk, haha. They are good missionaries but still! ;) 

Today, my companion and I got to go through the Brigham City temple and it was an incredible experience. The BC temple is an amazing temple and I love it! After that, we got to go workout with the Zone Leaders. We went to Roy High School to workout in their gym and after that, we did P90x, the yoga one and all that took 3 hours and I'm super sore today. I'm going to be more sore tomorrow! But that's progress! :) It has been a good day so far!

So, James Wales (the 28 years old Filipino man that we were teaching) got baptized by his home teacher last Saturday and confirmed by his brother in law last Sunday. It was awesome! The baptismal service was amazing! A couple of missionaries took a couple of their investigators and because of that, I was super nervous for the missionary presentation but the Spirit took control. I just had to open my mouth. It was a miracle. One of the missionaries that came happened to be my mission grandfather, meaning that he trained Elder Zarse who then trained me. His name is Elder Costello and guess what, he is from Mesa, Arizona!! He went to Mountain View and everything. He is a really cool guy and he is currently a Zone Leader for the Clearfield/Syracuse zone. After the baptism, I asked him for feedback because I always want to improve in my teachings and he said that he was impressed and proud of his "grandson"! It felt so good hearing that from one of the top missionaries in the mission. How do I know that? He has been a zone leader for the past 13 months... :)

A couple nights ago, we had a miracle happen! We were teaching a couple YW age girls, both are nonmembers, along with their divorced mother who is a less active. We already met with them once before and they had NO intention to get baptized. They were just meeting with us because the mother made them do it. The first lesson we had with them is just getting to know them. They talked about all of the Mormon people at their school and how some of them are just cruel to non members. That's not what Jesus Christ would do. He would accept everyone, regardless of their beliefs... "Be thou an example"!! Anyways, we decided to teach the Restoration to Renae and Erika (the two NM girls) and it was super awesome. The Spirit was so strong and after sharing the First Vision, I felt that I had to ask them to be baptized but I was terrified. I mustered up enough confidence and looked them both in the eyes and said, "Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God?" (PMG style! :) ) One of them said yes right away and the other was skeptic. She asked a question that involved gay and lesbians and how the church doesn't support them. We were able to talk a little bit about the The Proclamation to the World. The most amazing thing about that is that President and Sister Hiers received revelation that they should give a training on that during Zone Conference which was a day before this lesson. Elder Kelley told me that it was his first time hearing that question. What a miracle!! It was truly a huge blessing to have received that training beforehand or otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to answer that question and get her to commit to baptism! They committed to April 26 because they were atheists beforehand and they wanted some time to really make sure. We told them that they will be ready in March but they insisted on the last Saturday in April. But oh well, it was still a miracle! :D

The area is going great but despite our finding efforts, we are quickly running out of people to teach because we are baptizing them all! It's a blessing that we are getting a ton of referrals but we kept losing them! Oops, so resolve this problem, I made a referral binder so every time we get a name and address, we put it in there and on finding time, we compile a list and tract the names and hope it all works out! :)

It has been a wonderful week in the Utah Ogden mission. I love being a missionary and helping people access the Atonement through baptism! Thank you all for reading this and have a great week! Stay strong. Romans 8:31! Go and read it! It will be worth it! :) Love you guys! Love, Elder McGrath