We sat in counsel with the future foundation of God’s church here in San Pedro. We were two young missionaries, two members we had found here both by miracles, and 5 other incredible converts. The 9 of us formed the 9 person adult population of what will one day be the San Pedro Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was the first weekly leadership training meeting.
We taught simply. The basic, yet perfect, organization of the church, with it’s loud and clear focus on the family was drawn on a large piece of card-stock, for lack of a white-board. As we taught and explained how leaders of the church EXIST to help out the families, memories flooded my mind of the people in this small town that I have come to love so much.
Last Saturday, in the rush to invite people for church and ensure a good attendence the following day, we took a moment to help the Villalba family learn about the habits of family prayer and scripture study. We had invited them to do it, given them a checklist to mark each day, and even helped them set up a rotation for who would say the prayer each night, but they hadn’t followed through...yet.
That night, Elder Walker and I played the part of Laman and Lemuel, and Patricio (age 12) and Cristina (age 10) played the part of Nephi and Sam, with Juan, their father, as Lehi. We read 1 Nephi chapter 3. We felt the spirit strongly as we each read a verse and paused so that each could read verse 7: “I will go and do.” The magic words. They felt the spirit as well, and were inspired to promise us that they would form and maintain these VITALLY important habits every day.
Sunday Elder Walker and I got a break. Joel blessed and Juan passed the sacrament. Victorina, one of the members we found here, who had not been to church in over 10 years, gave a great talk about Missionary Work. Next week Joel and Dionicia will be giving talks. Once again, this week we were blessed to have 30 people in the meeting and the spirit was felt strongly. We are striving to prepare them for that day when other missionaries come to fulfill the normal misisonary role and it will be THEIRS to lead, direct, and help this family of believers grow. The miracles from Heavenly Father are brought to pass in order to achieve HIS purposes. We are blessed to be along for the ride.
Elder McCarty
Monday, March 29, 2010
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