Hello family and friends! I totally forgot to bring my journal to the library, so this post will probably not be nearly as detailed as previous ones. But I will do my best to remember what happened this week.
Monday night we had a lesson with a new investigator named Alex. he has been coming to church with one of the youth (who he has a crush on). He made a deal with her that he would come to church if she would come to Mass, So they do that every single Sunday! And he was curious what we actually believed, so we taught him the Restoration at President Hopkins home (in the mission Presidency). It went pretty well! He said he would read the Book of Mormon!
Tuesday we had Zone Conference. Collectively, we read the entire Book of Mormon in 2 hours (we had 13 groups read a different section). The point of the conference was to emphasize that the Book of Mormon is the MOST powerful tool we have as a missionary,. It's not the iPads, it's not the Bible, it's not even our testimonies. It's the Book of Mormon because one will NOT receive their own testimony of the gospel without first reading and praying about the Book of Mormon themselves. It was a pretty spiritual meeting. We also discussed the importance of character. Something new, that I have never considered, is that we do NOT develop character DURING a trial. Character can only be created or destroyed in the short moments after a trial has happened. There is room to either doubt, or to exercise stronger faith in Christ. During the trial, you can only execute the character you already have.
We have been walking for DAYS. My feet haven't been this sore in ages haha. We are allotted only a certain amount of miles a month and we were running really low...so we walked everywhere. In fact, we even walked through a hail storm! Pretty awesome. We also did a lot of splits with the ward to cover more appointments as well as save miles. One of the people we visited was a less-active named Maurine Cole. She is probably in her 70's and has been a member her whole life. However, she never has read or prayed about the Book of Mormon -__-. I think that is a problem we have in the church. So many are born into it and they never decide to read and pray about the Book of Mormon themselves! She has lots of the common concerns (polygamy, blacks, gay marriage, etc) that we resolved. But it will never be enough without reading and praying about it. So we committed her to read and pray every day. Something also I have observed...you cannot change someones behavior. Not ONCE in the scriptures does it even suggest you try. It only mentions a change of heart. Reading and praying every day changes the heart. Your heart changes your behavior!
The Davis couple is doing really well! We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ (3rd discussion) and it seemed to have a great impact on both of them. Sister Davis came to church this Sunday but Brother Davis did not...not sure what happened. But we are seeing them progress so much and we are excited for them! We teach them every Thursday. We also visited several people in the Hospital this week. Gave a few blessings. It is truly humbling to see how faithful these elderly and disabled men and woman are living in wheelchairs and in care centers.
Saturday was pretty funny. We were out roaming the area and saw a man and woman tilling the ground around this large stump. We pulled over and got out, asking if we could help them. They were trying to cut up all the roots of this stump, level the dirt, and prepare it for planting grass. In our suits, we started raking, tilling, and digging. Both this man and this woman were drunk, so it was entertaining conversation, but they were both very grateful. Turns out, both of them were very less-active members of the church. The man came up to each of us, placed his hand on our shoulder and said, "Do not quit what you are doing. Someone needs to do it, and you don't, no one will." You could tell this man was very humbled and sought help. Hopefully he will give us a call.
Yesterday was pretty good. We had 4 non-members at church. Elder Nessen finally got his visa to Brazil after 14 months of waiting. He leaves tomorrow, so Elder Rasmusson and I are driving him up to Billings tonight (which means we get to go to the temple tomorrow :)).
Congrats to Jesse on the Geronimo job! That is so exciting! He will do amazing and he will be all ready having back-to-back scout camps. What a boss. Tell him to take lots of pictures! I can't believe Lacey is coming home soon. That's ridiculous. I got about 10 more months which is also hard to believe. Torie I'm sure did awesome in band once again and that would be sweet if she joined the BYUI drumline! Love you all!
We found, "The Judgement Seat."
We had a replica of the Golden Plates at Zone Conference (they were even the right weight of about 70 pounds!)
I'm down to my one pair of shoes until I get some hot glue or super glue and this is us walking in the hail storm :)
