Hello family and friends! It's a blistering cold day in Powell, Wyoming! And I'm loving it! The wind is mainly the worst part. The snow literally hurts when it hits your face...partly because it's ice.
We had a decent week. Monday we found a new Less-active member. She actually asked to have her name taken off the records years ago but it never was...so that's how we found her! She smokes hardcore, is probably about 60 but looks 80, and doesn't come to church because she got offended years ago. Funny story about this visit...so she has this dog that was standing upright and then just went limp, fell sideways, hit its head on the glass table, and started having a seizure. We thought it was going to die and were freaking out and she just says, "Oh, No he does that. That's the third time today within the last three hours."....WHAT?!?!?! Poor dog. She said she would take it to the vet. I sure hope so.
Tuesday was long and exhausting. We went to Lovell's District Meeting which started at 9. President Mecham was interviewing our whole zone,. So most of the District Meeting, me and Elder Rasmusson were doing pre-interviews with missionaries. Then we went to the Cody District and did the same thing. I interviewed the Elders in Lovell, and then the Sisters in Cody. We didn't finish interviews till 5:20PM. 8 hours of interviewing...but it was good to meet with President!
I was privileged to give one of the Sisters in our zone a blessing prior to surgery. She has been sick for several weeks and is a brand new missionary. The surgery went very well and she has a renewed testimony of the power of the Priesthood which is awesome :) She understood that we can provide the Priesthood power, but the healing comes from her faith. That had a profound effect on her. Later that evening we met with the Young's and taught Lucus (the son) the Restoration. Our highlight of that evening was probably at about 8:30PM. We stopped by an inactive members home. He was recently married to a non-member. We told him at the door we don't have a lot of time but asked if it would be okay to share a quick video with him and his wife and he said, "If it's quick." So we showed a Mormon Message called, "Moments that Matter Most" by President Uchtdorf (mom you should watch it). We brought it back to eternal families and the wife loved it!
Thursday we found a potential investigator with the name of Braden. We were actually looking for his inactive grandma, but he answered the door and said she was asleep. So Elder Rasmusson asked, "Well, can we talk to you?!" and he said sure haha. This kid is 17 but I could have sworn he was about to graduate college. Full beard and thick black hair to his shoulders. We taught the full restoration outside on his doorstep at 8:30 at night. It went pretty well!
Friday Elder Rasmusson went to Byron on exchanges. So it was just me and Elder Ashcroft here in Powell. We had a really good discussion with Beau Brown about receiving a witness to his prayers to know if the church is true. He is a less-active. We mainly focused on finding less-actives and had some success. However the majority of them don't have legitimate excuses for not attending church. For example, one of them said they didn't have church clothes to wear (hasn't been coming for decades). We explained that it is ok for him to come to church in whatever he has and we can help him get the clothes he needs. Later Saturday night we met up with Elder Rasmusson at the Baptism the Lovell sisters were having. Pretty good turn out, but the Young's didn't come because the roads were really icy. However, they came to church and stayed ALL THREE HOURS! It was awesome because the topics discussed in Gospel Principles was exactly what they needed. They are doing awesome :)
Sunday we did splits. I stayed with Elder Rasmusson and Elder Ashcroft went with one of our ward missionaries. Something interesting...we found a relatively new recent convert who has been hiding at his girlfriends house. So Elder Ashcroft stopped by with the ward missionary and shared a message with him. The girlfriend called us that night with a nasty voicemail telling us that we are never allowed to come back and that we were ruining their family by talking with the boyfriend about church...meanwhile her ex-husband is incarcerated and she was in trouble wit with the police for other things. She apparently is Jewish and is angry because her boyfriend (who is a recent convert) won't marry a non-member. It's quite the situation.
Aside from that we had a great week! Our mission has had 103 baptisms and 131 reactivations since the year started, so things are rolling forward. Transfers are next week so that will be interesting. Happy birthday Mom! I sent a letter out Saturday, I hope it gets to you on time. I am jealous you got to go to the shooting range and I'm surprised that 1894 Winchester 30-30 even works still! Who would have thought that mom loves shooting guns? Haha have a great week!
Pictures are of Powell, WY :) Nearly every morning.
