BAPTISIM!

HELLO! Every Wednesday I feel that I can’t have as wonderful a time reading your e-mails and hearing about your lives as I had last Wednesday and yet again I am humbled and filled with gratitude to hear how amazing you all are and doing! Thank you for the love sent via E-mail :).

Things back home, like always, seem to be filled with excitement, adventure, mystery, and the thrills that come from living a McKenna lifestyle! As Madisyn begins to settle down from her Christmas Vacation (which finished at the end of January!) and THREE trips to Disneyland, Timette continues to press forward wasting no time to spread the joy of the gospel and the power of temples as she invited her friend to go through the Draper temple which just opened up! And as for the St. George McKenna’s football is still on the brain as Jeff prepares for the PRESIDENT’S DAY TOURNAMENT where he will be coaching not one but two football teams to victory leading Jackson (AKA Renaldo Jr.) and Meghan (AKA [place really good football players name here] Jr. :) ) to destroy the competition! And the coolest thing of all is that David Martin is going to Chile for his mission! You have to send him my regards! In answer to some questions I received… Yes, England does celebrate Valentines Day and it’s exactly the same lovey dovey stuff over here as it is in the Good ol’ USA… I haven’t really been fed by members at all until I got here, I have been fed more times by members in the past 3 weeks then I have my entire mission! Overall the Lord continues to shower his blessings upon us and my heart continues to brim with gratitude in response.

YES! Usually I get to this part of the E-mail and there are just too many amazing things that I want to write about! Like today I could write about how we met a young lad on Monday, talked a bit with him about the gospel, walked with him to his house, taught the Restoration, and committed him to be baptised which he accepted! I could write about when Martin Pass (our biblical scholar) had a concern that I had never even thought of before that was answered perfectly by a scripture used in the Book of Mormon and that the Spirit slammed him to the ground (well not literally but if our discussion was a wrestling match he would have been pinned :) and left him with nothing to say! I could write about the long hours of trackting, in the cold and snow to finally see fruit when a man by the name of Neil was taught the restoration. But today I want to share with you the baptism of Robert Halliver and his letter which I received this past Thursday… Robert Halliver is an investigator that I was teaching in Middleton who had accepted an invitation, whom I never got to see baptised because I was transferred the day after I had extended the commitment! But no matter, for not even being at the baptism would be as wonderful as was this letter! As I read about the challenges that he was facing and the hardships that he had experienced since he had agreed to be baptised my heart was troubled but as I continued to read I came upon something that produced a ‘sacred moment’ (as I like to call them). He wrote, “I was lying in bed thinking about weather or not I should get baptised because there was just so much opposition when I remembered the things that you and Elder Taylor taught me to do, so I rolled out of bed knelt down and prayed… and now I know 100% that I should be baptised.” On February 7, 2009 Robert Halliver (who has a tattoo on his back that says ‘Even God can’t judge me’) was baptised a member of the true church of Jesus Christ. I could write 3 pages more on the trials he has had to face, on the changes he had to make to live the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity, on how he came to know that Christ does live and that Joseph Smith is his prophet, but I don’t want you to focus on that. What I want you to know is that Robert Halliver has felt the Spirit, he has felt that unquenchable love that burns with in your very heart, and now as I bear my testimony to you in this E-mail and to those whom I meet on the street, I can say with conviction and surety that I know Jesus Christ lives, that this is his church, that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord, that the Book of Mormon is true, and that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet… and know that Robert Halliver carries this same testimony! ‘How great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my father’

How I love the Lord…
Elder McKenna

P.S. the picture is me and Rob :)