Where he left off...

It's been another great week! I'll start with finishing the story from last week though. This doesn't so much show what we did as much as how Christ is with us through our trials:

The Oliva family didn't know what to expect when we got to the hospital. When we finally got to see her, you could tell she was in bad shape, but not as much as we were expecting. One of the first things we noticed was a famous LDS portrait of Jesus Christ above the girl's bed. The mother told us the situation: for the past several days, their daughter had been talking about a man that was behind her in the room. She told her parents that he been there for looking after for awhile, and that he ought to go by now because he had been there so long. They couldn't figure out what she was talking about, until they got a package from Sister Oliva. They opened it up and right there at the top was the picture of Christ--then the little girl said, "mom, look! It's the man!" 
    The Thursday before we came, the girl had a dream with the Man. He told her that everything was going to be ok and she needed to trust the doctors, and it wasn't her time. When we gave the blessing, Elder Nebeker felt impressed to echo the same message. Let me tell you, this was one of the most emotional and miraculous situations I've ever seen. The last thing we knew, she was going to go into a seriously risky, last-option surgery. But we asked Sister Oliva about it just a day or two ago, and she said it went just fine and she was recovering.

Ok, now something lighter. Last night we had a pretty funny experience with an investigator. She's older and doesn't remember things well, and the last reading assignment we gave her Moroni 10, which has the famous invitation to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. Well, she told us she went back a few pages and read chapter 9 as well, which if you're not familiar with it, is one of the most gruesome and saddening chapters in all of scripture. When she told us she read it, I said, "Yeah that chapter is... uh..." "absolutely beautiful. You know, I liked it so much I read it twice." I'm really not sure what happened... my best bet is she read something else.

I know this work is true, and I'm grateful every day to be a part of it and represent Jesus Christ.

Elder Gaughan

For a preview of next week's email, read D&C 84:20-21. We had a great lesson from the Stake President on what that actually means.