Oct 8

October 8, 2006

Today’s topic: church on the res. Different, but honestly wonderful. Our meetings are at 9:00, so we started about 9:25. Thanks to our children who have served missions with the Lamanites, we were not surprised by the time. When Relief Society started there were only the current and past young women presidents in attendance. But by the time Sacrament Meeting started, there were about 35 people there. We have an opening exercise, then Relief Society/Priesthood, Sunday School and finally Sacrament Meeting. Today it was fast Sunday. Two women bore their testimonies; one was all in Apache and the other all in English. The English woman talked about her son who died recently. The branch president told us that it was either a suicide or homicide, the police haven’t decided for sure and are still investigating. The Branch President is Apache so he mixes the languages. He taught the Sunday School lesson, and it was very good, but he’d be speaking and then I’d wonder what had happened because he’d just switch to Apache. It’s a fascinating language to listen to.

The Branch President is President Benito and he’s just amazing. What a strong testimony. He and his family (wife Maxine and 3 children, Keegan, Faith and Ariel) came to visit tonight. The children are adorable. They sat at the kitchen table and wrote letters to us. So sweet! Both President and Maxine told us they were converted through dreams they had. We believe God speaks to the people in the ways they understand. Maxine was taking the missionary lessons and said she just couldn’t accept baptism for the dead. The missionaries told her to pray about it and she did, and dreamed about a girl who had died and was crying because no one would do her baptism. President dreamed that he was somewhere talking to a heavenly messenger and asked if the church was really from God. The messenger said that in a few days his grandfather would tell him that he had a pain in his right foot and when that happened he would know the church is from God. Sure enough a few days later the grandfather complained of a pain just like in his dream.

I loved talking to Heather and Beckie and Veda on the phone tonight. I love comments on the Blog. And now I love going to bed. Goodnight all.