I was studying this morning and I loved that talk from general conference. And I loved the footnotes as well.  I thought I should recommend it to you.  It's by Elder John C Pingree Jr.  It is a great talk, and It should help you a lot.

This week I also reflected a lot on "The Reasons Why".  Really we need to do more than just read the scriptures or pray or go to church or to the temple or share the gospel.  We have to do it for the right reasons. And maybe just say to receive revelation is not a good enough reason.  We have to go before the Lord with a specific question every time that we pray, read, study, meditate, or take the sacrament or go to the temple we should be meditating a question, and a specific question at that.  And that way we can get a specific answer, and really grow line upon line and precept upon precept until we do get to be perfect "even as [Christ] or our Father in heaven [are] perfect" It's very interesting that we all learned about the same lessons this week, but in such a different way.

So I would like to talk about Friday.  We started by going with Jose Mateo.  He is 86, I think I already told you a bit about him. He is the one that went running for the Book of Mormon when he saw us coming down the street.  So we went with him for the 3rd time on Friday. We got there and started talking to him about the gospel.  The key to success with him is if he starts talking a whole bunch and telling a ton of stories (that is what all Mexicans tend to do, a bit like the guy in Ant-man) then we just grab the Book of Mormon to share a scripture and then he listens to us. So we were doing that and we explained the Restoration of the Church pretty easily and simply so that he could understand.  And when we got to the end we even invited him to a baptismal date for the 20th of April and he said yes.  So we invited him to continue reading second Nephi 31.  We said that he should continue reading where he was. And he thought that we meant that he should keep reading Moroni 10:5, the scripture we had shared moments before.  So he thought that we said to continue reading Moroni 10:5 until he memorized it. Today we are going to go back and check that.  He said that it is going to be rough to memorize it. So that made us chuckle a bit. But then we invited him to pray. We explained to him how.   "First you say Heavenly Father, then we thank thee for.... and you say whatever you feel grateful for, then we ask thee for.... and you say what you want to ask for. And then you finish saying in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen"  So he looked at the page for a moment, and said OK, I can do that.  So this is word for word what he said (translated into English)  "Heavenly Father.  We thank the for. We ask the for. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen."  I thought it was funny but I did contain myself.  But my companion did not.  He let out a chuckle.  The good news is that Jose is a little deaf now, so he didn't realize it. And he looked up with the biggest smile on his face.  So we congratulated him and told him that we would come back on Monday to see how it has gone.  he couldn't go to church yesterday but next week he should be able to.  It was a great experience.

So from there we went to get the food which was as far away as it could possibly be. So we went walking and a lady stopped us and asked for us to come over. She was there with another lady and they told us about how their niece, and granddaughter was in an accident. It was a little girl of a year and a half.  And she died in the accident. They didn't exactly tell us what happened but I think that she got ran over by a car.  So they asked us to say a prayer for her. So we went in and said a prayer for her ashes. And then they invited us to come back at 4:30 to the funeral mass and share our message there.  So we did come back and we shared the Plan of Salvation with 30 people.  And they invited us to come back again the next day.  Both days we sang some hymns.  The first day we shared I Am a Child of God and I Know That My Redeemer Lives. The spirit was really strong.  The second day the people treated us more like just another Christian church and didn't really pay as much attention and the spirit was not as present.  We did share about the Family Proclamation and the eternal nature of families.  We sang Families Can Be Together Forever, and Nearer My God to Thee.  We are going to go back once or twice more this week to see if anybody would really like to know a bit more.  After we finished both days then they started their Catholic prayers and songs, so that was very interesting to be present during that, but the people at least felt the spirit a bit and I think that we planted a ton of seeds.

The other great event that occurred on Friday was when we went with Ivonne and Antonio.  We had to plan the baptismal interview for Saturday. And Ivonne had told us that she was not sure about the baptism a few days ago. So when we got there we thought that we were just going to confirm Antonio's baptism and cancel Ivonne's. But the most incredible thing happened. She told us about her desires to get baptized because of all of the changes that her dad has made.  She wants to follow his example and so she did decide to get baptized and she passed the interview and so did Antonio. That's not all, they also came to church alone yesterday because Gonzalo had to work yesterday for some rainy day postponing to his work this week. But Antonio and Ivonne made the changes necessary to their plans to come with us to church.  The biggest concern Ivonne had yesterday when we talked about the baptism was if she had to fast for the baptism. She was relieved when we told her no.

So that was the best day of my week. Hopefully we can have some more great experiences this week to tell you next week.  I love you and thank you all for your prayers. They did make the difference for Ivonne, and I know that it is thanks to your prayers that I am still here. Thank you so much.

I Love You

Elder Brady Allred