One Highlight of our Mission

The young man here is Andre Lukashuk. One evening in November Elder Bailey and I walked into a tiny local market and while I was searching for what I needed Elder Bailey had a brief conversation with this young man. Elder Bailey is great at inviting and gave him an English Conversation invitation and a Missionary Prig. A 'Prig'  has information of our church on it as well as the addresses of all the branches. In Russian 'priglashaem' means "invite". Well this young man walked into church about a week later. The missionaries greeted him and invited him to stay. Andre stayed for the whole 3 hour segment that day and three weeks later after meeting with the missionaries almost every single day for that time period and he was baptized on December 8th. He is truly a remarkable young man. I call him our 'Golden Boy'.  A week after he was baptized President Campero our mission president invited him to serve a mini mission. A mini mission is an opportunity for the youth here to serve for a period of 6 weeks to 3 months as a full time missionary teamed up with another full time missionary. It's a great experience for these youth. The interesting thing about this story is Andre had recently graduated from his Institute Studies. He had only been working at this market as a manager for a short period of time. About two days after we had our brief meeting in that store or around that period of time he was let go from this work, the higher ups said he didn't have enough experience. Elder Bailey and I had not been in that market for over 6 months and I was not intending on going into that market that night either, but a different one up the street farther. The hand of the Lord was truly evident as Elder Bailey said let's go in this market and there was our Andre. Andre had been applying and interviewing for a new job the whole three weeks he was having lessons with the missionaries. We were all praying for him to find a new job that would allow him to be active in church on the Sabbath day. He had rejected a few job offers not feeling right about them and then he received an invitation to go on a mini mission. He was excited but overwhelmed. He made the decision to serve for one transfer. Three days into his service he called up the mission president and told him he wanted to extend his service for two transfers. Wow, how great shall be his joy! Oh I almost forgot Roger had the great privilege of baptizing this young man. We recognize that we are only tools here for our Lord and our Heavenly Father and we are grateful for this wonderful privilege.