President Hughes and His Wife Visit the Center!

This past week has been a missionary's dream. To begin our week at the Center we had the privilege of having our Stake President from Orem, Utah President Hughes and his wife, Bonita visit our center and speak to the YSA here.

They were in Europe on business and were good enough to take the time to see us. I wish you could all have been there. We had 35 of our young people there. Twelve of them were non members and 5 were less active. President Hughes bore such a powerful testimony to them of the truthfulness of the Gospel and the power of the Savior and His atonement. He testified to them with great authority that he knew that they did not find themselves there by chance, but had been guided by the Lord who is aware of them to find themselves there at that time. He told a little about the story of how Elder Lisonbee and I came to be here as missionaries at this time in our lives. Many of our YSA said they felt like an apostle or prophet had come. Aferwards one of young people who has been coming for about a year and who started out as an agnostic and is now reading the Book of Mormon, but who has not been ready to take the lessons yet, hugged me and cried. I told her that all I wanted was for her to be happy. Through her tears she said, " I am happy, when I am here at the Church." I hugged her and said, "Then don't ever stop coming." One of our investigators said he went home and told his non-member family everything President Hughes said almost word for word. Two days later this young man set a baptism date. We also had another young man set a date the very next day. Truly the mantle of a righteous stake president is a powerful thing.

Our daughter, Megan who has been with us for most of the Summer said it was the very best night we have ever had at the Center. We had to agree. She had her last night at the Center this past week and bore such a great testimony and got to participate in teaching a couple of the lessons too. We were ready to put a name tag on her. She has been such a help here as she has been able to get to know so many of the young people and loves them so much. And she has been able to help us keep track of all of them through facebook. As she was packing to go home she said, "Mom I want so much to share with the people back home what I have experienced here. But how can I ever share the love I have for these people, how can I ever find the words to describe them or describe the spirit that we have felt?" I told her that she now can understand what every good missionary feels when he or she has to return home. These feelings are also ones that her mother and father are keenly aware of for they know that in about 6 months they will have to face the same thing too. But in the meantime, we are so grateful for this last week. So grateful for President Hughes and Bonita who did a great service for a Stake very far away from their own, the Milan, Italy Stake. The young single adults here will not forget them.

President and Sister Hughes and Elder Lisonbee and I with a few of the YSA who were there the night they came.