July 9, 2012

Dear Family,

The Mets game you went to last week sounded awesome. Would have loved to have been there. I'm glad the Mets are doing well, and I'm really glad you were able to see Travis at the fireworks too.  Tell me how his homecoming talk was.  I am already really nervous to give mine.  I was reading over my farewell talk the other day and feel like my English has diminished significantly since I've been focusing primarily on the Spanish language

I am super happy to announce they will be sending back to the Catalina Branch in Phoenix were I will help train with another missionary that just finished his training process.  I feel like I have been so blessed on my mission in terms of my areas.  Even in this area, which was not as enjoyable as the other areas, we had a lot of success.  I have a feeling these next three weeks are going to fly by and I'll be home in no time.  The Branch has had a lot of work lately so I'm sure we will be very, very busy.  I actually just went there to the baptism of the brother of one of my converts (that Elder Carrillo taught) this past weekend.

We had an awesome miracle this week.  For a good while now, we've been talking to the first person we see upon leaving the house.  So a couple of weeks ago we spoke with our neighbor who, after hearing about our message, she expressed her devout Catholic roots but nevertheless, said we could come by to say a prayer in her house.  So we came back that next Saturday in the evening which kind of turned out to be a bad idea because her husband was absolutely plastered and controlled the conversation.  BUT... I happened to catch a glimpse of one of his sons who looked extremely familiar, so I inquired as to his past experience with the church.  Turns out he had attended Brian's baptism, one of our recent converts who got baptized about a month ago.  So we invited him to come to mutual, which he said he had gone to before.  The next day we planned to go by Brian's to tell him to make sure he invites this friend, Pedro, and when we got there Brian's mother was getting out of her car.  That right there was a miracle in itself since we hadn't been able to talk to her since Brian's baptism because she is always working.  So upon greeting her, she politely invites us into her house, offers us water, takes a seat and the very next thing that she says is: "yo me quiero bautizar asi como se bautizo mi hijo brian" (I want to get baptized just like my son, Brian) who was also right there sitting on the couch. So we did a quick tactful assessment of her actual desire, bore our testimonies, invited her to commit to a baptismal date and set up another appointment at the Bishop's house across the street for that Friday.  She went to the appointment, accepted all of the doctrine and shared with us a dream she had received in which Christ, who looks just like he did in that famous church painting with the red robe on, signaled to her to join this church.  It was just another testimony to me that this is the Lord's work and as long as we are doing all we can, the Lord prepares the elect.  All of this came from just talking to Brian, who was a non-member, on my very first night in the area at mutual and setting up an appointment in the house of one of his friends.  The youth are great in the area.

Another miracle is that one of the people Elder Carrillo and I found for the English Elders just got interviewed and is getting baptized this Saturday.  We just saw her sitting on a curb with a sorrowful look on her face in one of the more squalid complexes of the area and decided to teach her the gospel.  She was extremely receptive and so when we handed her over to the English Elders she progressed as fast as possible.  I even got the chance to teach her on one of the exchanges with those missionaries (Elders Johnson and Clark).  Anyway, those are a few of the miracles I've seen of late and it feels great to be apart of them.  I hope all is well at home and that it cools down a bit for when I get back!!

Love,
Elder Kinney