#ShareTheGift

Hey y'all!!!! This past week was so amazing!!!!! Last Thursday was one of the best days I have had on my mission. We had two NM L/W (L/W = lessons with a member present. NM = non-member. LA = less-active)  and two LA L/W and all of those lessons went extremely well. 

One of those NM L/W is with Rica. She is from Taipei, Taiwan. She lost her baptismal date, which was going to be this upcoming Saturday because she is going back to Taiwan this Thursday for Winter Break. We committed her to keep taking the lessons through Skype. She was really happy about that. Also, the highlight of this lesson is following up on her reading assignment. We assigned her to read 3 Nephi 11 and she was able to read it! We asked her how she felt when she read it. She then began to describe the feeling as "magical"! We were ecstatic!!! We bore our testimony that she felt the Holy Ghost strongly and we also mentioned that God told her through the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon is true. She said quietly, "Yeah, He did.". WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! She is becoming more converted each lesson! :) 

We also had a couple of great lessons with the Goble family. The baptisms will be held on December 29th and it will be GRAND! So, what's going to happen is that there will be two convert baptisms, a 8 years old baptism and their cousin is coming up from Texas to be baptized with her cousins! There will be a total of four children following the example of Jesus Christ by entering into the waters of baptism and making the baptismal covenant with the Lord. It is going to be very exciting. I am SOOOOO pumped for the baptism. It will be grand! 

Also, we had a huge miracle happen with one of our less-actives that we are teaching. His name is Dallas Nutt and he served two tours in Afghanistan and Kuwait, respectively. Right after his two tours, he had a brain aneurysm. The brain aneurysm happened about 3 years ago. His wife just left him two months ago. :( But nevertheless, we had an awesome lesson with him last Thursday. We were asking about how he is doing with church, prayer and scripture study and he is doing well on the first two but not on the last one. He seemed really upset about that so I asked him what was on his mind. He completely broke down and told us everything. It was incredible. He said that he really wants to become a better man. We shared the video, "True Christians". After watching that video, we had an awesome discussion about how we need to do the small and simple things, like service and scripture study, outside of church. That is one of the ways we can become a better man. He seemed very determined to keep all of his commitments that he has extended. What a miracle! 

Elder Freitag and I had a sick lesson with Aaron Marez. It all started out with some chit-chat about Christmas and he told us that he hasn't done very many Christmases in his life and I replied with "why?". He then proceeded to tell us about how he grew up a JW. We asked him about his views on both JW and the LDS church He said that there is pros and cons about both religions. He went on explaining about the LDS church. It was only the Word of Wisdom commandment that he doesn't like. He talked about how Jesus Christ drank wine back then and how come we can't. We shared a scripture found in Daniels 1: 6-20. After that, he said, "Oh, I didn't know that the Word of Wisdom is found in the Bible." Well, duh!!! The Gospel isn't new. It existed all the way back to Adam and Eve. It was lost during each apostasy and it was always restored with each dispensation. If you have any questions concerning about what I just mentioned, please feel free to message me on Facebook and I would be more than glad to help shed some light for your understanding. 

Guess what?! Draco and Krista (Draco's mother) came to church last Sunday and ... they loved it!!!! Wooooooooo!!! We taught about Draco last Sunday evening about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he is keeping all of his commitments. His mom, Krista, said that she is impressed with how much Draco is doing to prepare himself for baptism. Yay! 

We didn't have a lesson with Cherry and Frank because the lesson fell through but they came to church! :) 

Last Wednesday evening, we got out of a car and were walking to a member's house because they told us that they have a couple referrals for us. There was this 14 years old boy walking his two dogs. We went over and started to talk to him. We had a great conversation and he told us that he used to go to church every single week and he never got baptized. We asked him if he wants to start going back to church now and he said that he can try it out again. We set up another lesson with him for Saturday. He gave us the address to his house. Then, the next Saturday came by, we looked at the address one more time and guess what, it was the one of the Ward Mission Leader's house. We thought it was a phony address but we decided to try it anyways. As we walked to the house, the WML came up to us and told us the entire story. Long story short, the WML is the kid's stepfather. The real father is working as a mechanic for the US Army and he is serving in Japan right now. He is super anti and would never let the kid get baptized if the kid really wants to. So, we just decided to do the "He is the Gift" message. After the message, we asked him if there is anything we can do for him. He looked on the ground for a second and then looked at me and said, "Can you guys come back next week?". Having never received that answer from anyone before, I was stunned. There was a 10 second silence and then, I said, "Uh, yeah. Yeah, we can definitely do that! Same time, next week?". He agreed to that. Hmm, what a miracle. I was not expecting that at all. haha. 

This past week was super awesome. I absolutely love being a missionary. I love being the Lord's representative. Let us all remember Jesus Christ during this special time of the year and #ShareTheGift!!!!! christmas.mormon.org and share that video with everyone you know! I love you all and enjoy your week. Stay strong and you can do hard things! Be safe and don't forget to do CPR! :) Love, Elder McGrath

Christmas Tree.. Look at the presents. See that picture of #HeIsTheGift!!! :)

I didn't know that Santa was soo old.. ;) I found this while out working.