November 13, 2010

Wow, it sounds like you are all doing great back at home! Like there, Christmas is in full swing and all the stores are full of that stuff. The last 3 days have been FREEZING, so it's actually felt like winter during the Christmas season haha
When is the groundbraking for the Phoenix Temple going to happen, it's been a long time, no? I'm glad to hear the Gilbert temples finally starting! There is going to be a boom in missionary work in Arizona! Get workin :)
Bah! Alyssa and Jonathan got married, that's weird but great! I'm glad they are happy, send me some pictures!!!! Are they going to stay in Tucson, or are they headed out?
Mary was going to get baptised today, but there's a worldwide stake leadership training thing at the same time as her baptism today!!! So...we are having lunch at her house today and next Saturday she will get baptised with Rosana.
This week we had an incredible finding experience! We felt super strong we should go down a street and God led us to a door I had never knocked before (I thought I'd knocked every door in this area 20 times haha) A woman looked out the window, smiled big, and opened the door and told us to enter and sit down. She left the room and we just looked at eachother confused for a little bit, wondering if she was a less-active member or what. She came back with chairs and we sat down and learned a bit about her. It turned out she lived up in the city of Rivera for most of her life and the missionaries found her many years ago. She was an investigators for many many years, and had always had great desires to follow Christ. She brought the gospel to her entire family: parents, brothers, sisters, EVERYONE was baptised up in Brasil, except her. Before they had access to the Portugues Book of Mormon, she had even translated the entire book from Spanish to Portugues for her family. She knows it well and had always had a testimony of it. She went to the temple open house and everything! Her husband never wanted to get married to her because he never thought it was necessary. Well... 2 years ago her husband passed away, and little by little her world has broken down since. 3 weeks ago her son was found selling drugs in her house and she sent him to Colonia to live with her brother. As her world came crashing down on her the other day, she began to pray for guidance from God in what she should do, and at that very moment the Lord led us to her door and she recognized us as representatives of him. We invited her to be baptised next week right then and there and she accepted with a LOT of excitement. When we work really hard, the Lord blesses us with tender mercies.
Carlos is not going to be able to be baptised next week now, as he's been put on bed-rest for diabetes. After working hard in a career for 61 years (he's 77 now) he feels so helpless and useless not being able to do anything. I told him a lot about Grandpa because he reminds me a lot of him. Grandma, could you send him a little letter? I think it could help, I'll translate it and everything :)

I have a special request for Christmas. One of my best friends is Elder Cardenas from Peru. He was baptised just a year before the mission, and noone else in his family is members or anything, he's never gotten a letter, email, much less a package or anything and I love the guy a ton and it would be cool if you could send him a good package too! One thing in particular I want in it is one of those Tech-Deck mini skateboards things, on P-Days in my 4th change when we lived together, we made a Tech-Deck skate park hahahaha it would be really funny.
Okay, that's all I got, I love you all and pray for you always, do everything in your power to nourish the Lord's vineyard in whichever stewardships you have, and then go the extra mile. And after that warm-up, make miracles happen. Make people see the Lord's light within you and recognize you as a representative of Him. And then let them know what, why, and how.
Con amor,
Elder Magnuson

Hey super important thing I forgot! Have all of our family, friends, ward, etc.. send to the gmail as soon as possible their testimony and a family picture! We are flooding Uruguay with thousands of Books of Mormons with testimonies in them for Christmas, so please let everyone I know to do it this week and send it to the gmail asap. Thanks!