Week 67 - October 21, 2019 "Elder Soares in McAllen"

Hey! 
Well this week was crazy. To start, Arely and Martin got baptized! yay! that was a special experience and it was awesome to take part in it with them. we had two exchanges this week with Brownsville ZLs and McAllen ZLs. I went with Elder Lambert and Faupula. That was sweet. We had a good time and worked hard. Also we finished up all of the emergency kits and got them out to all of the areas this week. 

This week Elder Soares, one of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came to our mission. That was a super special experience but also took a lot of planning. We had to make sure and plan that everything in the meeting went smoothly so we pretty much had backups for everything in case anything went wrong. It was awesome though. he came and we took a picture with him, Elder Ochoa from the Seventy, and Elder Villareal from the area seventy. When I shook Elder Soares' hand, he said, "Elder Freedom"! hahah that was special and in the meeting they really emphasized the importance of our calling and the unique opportunity it is. They told us that our missions are an experience that are going to shape how the rest of our lives go. The next day he came to our stake for a stake conference. It was special and we had some investigators there. One of them was the Garza Family and they told us they want to be baptized. That was awesome and we're hoping to help them be baptized the end of this month or the beginning of next:) We've also been teaching someone named Raymundo and he has a baptismal date for the 10th of November. He came to the stake conference and liked it also. That was a very unique opportunity. Elder Soares speaks with so much power but at the same time he is so humble and meek. I don't know how to explain it but you can just tell truth and confidence flows through his veins. He shared such simple gospel truths but honestly I almost cried like 5 times. He talked about his families conversion and how 4 people in his family passed away in 2 years. He talked about the plan of salvation and the importance of temples. Idk. it's hard to explain how I felt but it was so awesome. this week was one for the books. I can't believe this transfer is already half way over. it's too fast.

Love you guys. The gospel is true.

Elder Freedman