The Rest of the Story - Elder McNeal

Tonight we welcome new elders to the mission field. On their first day, they have the opportunity to go tracting with the assistants. Two of the new elders found a person and taught a first discussion on their first day that was baptized a few weeks later. One of these elders was Elder McDaniel who is serving as an assistant at the present time and the other was Elder McNeal who arrived November 2007.

Elder McNeal did not know that the person he found had been baptized. In his first interview in Guyana, he asked me (President Robison) when he would love his mission. I thought it was a natural question because he had only been out three weeks and missionary work is hard. I told him he would love his mission in 2 months. He wrote down in his planner "President says I will love mission in 2 months." The next day was his first zone conference. During the introductions of the new elders, Sister Robison mentioned that an exciting thing had happened as a result of the latest new elder group's first day in the mission field. She invited me to explain. I announced to the 4 zones assembled there that one of the new missionaries had found a person that was baptized just that past week. I then said the person's name and invited Elder McNeal to come up and tell the story of how he had found this person. Well, Elder McNeal's jaw dropped. He stood up and began to give every detail of what the person wore, what he said, and how the discussion felt. He was excited! He concluded his experience by saying "I love my mission!."

Today in the weekly e-mails, I received a note from Elder McNeal about his experience on the last day of this past year and the miracle that took place in getting 2008 (2012) people into the waters of baptism. In his words:

"Last week Tuesday, Dec. 31st, we were working really hard to make sure people will be baptized to reach our goal and I was seeing miracles right before my eyes. I went on tradeoffs with Elder Falatou and we were going to interview people for baptism and we met this teenager on the street who has been an eternal investigator for like 5 months and he just would not get baptized. We talked to him for 5 minutes about being baptized on New Years Eve and just like that he said, “Yea, I’ll be baptized tomorrow!” I couldn’t believe my ears, it was incredible! Another man went from smoking 12 cigarettes a day to none in one day and didn’t have a desire to pick one up again for over a week. After he was baptized, he now has such a strong testimony now and wants to go teach with us almost everyday and gave up his job in the interior so that he can keep the Sabbath and take the sacrament. He is also calling his friends on Sundays to invite them to church without us even asking him to do it. So my answer to you would be, "Yes, I love my mission!"