Wonderful Counselor

Elder Hathaway was blastin' one of Amy Grant's Christmas albums, and her rockin 80's synth version of 'Emmanuel' came on. My first thought: MOM!

Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Wonderful, Counselor!
He's the Prince of Peace, Mighty God, Holy One!

I believe if we put all of Mom's Christmas on the computer it'd fill an 80 gig ipod. Mom, two more months and you will be whole once again, in ''the most wonderful time, of the year'' so says Amy Grant.

Right now were working on getting two family's married and baptized. Following the norm, the families are in what is called a Union Libre, or Free Union, which means they are not living the Law of Chastity. I'm pretty sure I'm going to come back to Colombia after the mission to be a Family Lawyer, because after helping six families get married, I've become more familiar with the in's and out's of the horribly organized system than any foreigner should ever know. Ha, the first miracle was when a birth certificate which was supposedly burnt, arrived here in Faca. The next challenge is of one our investigators who has no idea where he was registered, or his mom, and no one wants to tell us either... Welp, just gotta confide in the promise in matthew 19:26

'with God, all things are possible.'

Nevertheless, this man who doesn't know where he was registered is the best. His name is Jose Enrique. The bishop a couple weeks ago gave us a number and said 'hey, this guy wants to get baptized. here's his number and direction.' GOLDEN! Turns out about two weeks before he was release from prison. He was convicted to serve 11 years for raping his daughter. The Police doing what police do, they got him to plead guilty for something he didn't do. But three years into the sentence he was found innocent and was released. But 8 months before we found him, he got to know the church though an excommunicated prison mate, who's brother sends him materials from the church, such as triple combinations, bibles, liahonas, seminary manuals, hymnals, and so forth. And so every Sunday in the prison they would have their make shift sacrament meetings, even fast and testimony meetings. When we asked him if he had a book of mormon, he pulled out his triple combination, lds bible, and hymnal---best part---he had made covers for them all out of the prison uniform.

So we learn of the perfectness of God's plan, and how sometimes we have to suffer injustice, to fulfill the grand purposes of God. Maybe that would have been the only place that Jose Enrique would have accepted the gospel. And now he's on fire. He's willing to do anything to be baptized.

Congrats Dad on the big deal. I love the lesson on planning from that, 200 hours. my district has been pretty lazy when it comes to planning, but after we've done everything we can, when our backs are up against the wall, that's when the divine help comes. President Lee said to President Erying some time ago ''If you want revelation, do your homework.''

I love you all sooo much.

e. adams