Atonement of Christ/Faith Is a Principal of Action, (First Investigator)

(Here is part of Natalie's email from last Monday.  I will post more of the story later this week.)

Okay so there's someone I want to tell you about. His name is Manuel. We found him on my very first night here. We were riding our bikes, and we always just say hi to everyone we ride past. He was walking by and we said hi, and he asked us if we were preaching. We said yes, and got off our bikes to talk to him. He said that he already knew the Book of Mormon was true, and basically that this is God's church. HOLY COW, right??? We talked to him for over half an hour just standing right there on the corner of the sidewalk. The thing with him is that he does not feel he has lead a very pure life and feels a lot of shame about that, and I don't think that he feels he can change. We talked to him a lot about repentance and how we can use the Atonement of Jesus Christ to receive forgiveness and become clean again. He is so prepared! The thing with Manuel too is that I am given the gift of tongues when I talk to him! I can understand what he says, and I can talk back to him! I don't know if its because I feel more comfortable because I know his whole story (vs other investigators who have been working with the missionaries for a long while), but I can really talk with him! We asked him to read Alma 36. He would text us almost everyday telling us to have a good day. We met with him again last night. We were going to go to a mission president fireside, but we ended up at the wrong building somehow, so we just talked with him outside the church building. He hadn't read Alma 36, so we read it together and talked about it a lot. We answered a lot of his questions and told him about a lot of the blessings of the gospel. We talked about how we can have eternal families on the earth and how we have a prophet here on the earth. He seriously loves ALL of it and I can tell he believes all of it. The only thing is he always says that he isn't a good person and that he's done and still does a lot of bad things, but he's trying to change and get better. He also says that his family would be really upset with him if he left the Catholic church. But that lesson went so great and we set up another lesson to talk with him on Tuesday. But this morning, we got a text from him saying thanks so much for our time and that it was such a pleasure to know us, but that he's decided he doesn't want to learn anymore and waste our time. AHHHHHHHH!!! NOOOOOO!!!!!! We aren't quite sure what to do, but we are hoping to be able to talk to him and find out exactly what his needs/concerns are. Pray for him! It's just hard because I know that this gospel would give him and his family SO much happiness and joy. It would change everything for him, and he already knows its true. We kept telling him that faith is a principle of action and he needs to follow what he knows is right. He said he would read and pray last night, so hopefully we can get this figured out.