LACEY IS ENGAGED?!?!?!?!?!?! I'M GOING TO BE A BROTHER IN-LAW?! SOMEDAY I'LL BE AN UNCLE?! Lacey's subject line said READ MINE FIRST haha. So I did! That's so exciting Lacey! I support and approve 100%! I know that if the Lord approves, I definately do! So what's next? How do you even plan for a wedding? We plan all the time as missionaries but not for weddings...actually we're planning a wedding in 2 weeks haha!
Well my week seems uninteresting now...I'm not engaged or anything... :) I suppose that is a good thing.
Had another successful week! 29 lessons, 4 non-members at church, 3 less-actives at church, and 3 new less-actives to work with! I love this area. Monday we helped Braden move and taught a sweet lesson with the Kiers. We continue to teach them weekly and have an appointment with them tonight! Sister Kier is awesome and is progressing. The whole family came to church!
Tuesday we started exchanges with Elder Payne (an Assistant to the President). We took him to see Mariana. She got super mad at us and sent us a rebuking text for trying to teach her the gospel. She just wanted us to be friends. We told her that was not our purpose and Christ taught too everyone, even his crucifiers so we should do likewise. The Young's are doing well, they started doing family home evenings! We also met with the Greenwalds!. Sister Greenwald is SIster Davis' (recently reactivated) sister! She wants to come back to church and we are going to start teaching them the discussions over again. How sweet is that!? Talking to members, all of them are surpised with many of these Less-active's progress because they all said they would never change and just gave up on them. Heck no! Never give up on anybody!
Wednesday was Zone Leader Training. I gave a talk defining what a successful missionary is and Elder Rasmusson discussed the blessings of our diligence and faith. Our mission baptized 77 people last Month. When Elder Godoy (member of the 70) came to our mission, he made a Prophecy. Our mission is ranked #1 out of the 22 missions in our region. We find the LEAST amount of people (because therer is noone here) but baptize the MOST. That means we're really good teachers! He read us Alma 26:22 which says there are 4 things needed to baptize thousands: Repentance, Faith, Good Works, and Praying unceasingly. He said we mastered 3 of the 4. The set of missionaries I came out with were known as the "purification group" (which President told me in an interview). We got rid of all bad past traditions, so that is the repentance part. We do good works and we do something called "Purposefull Prayer." Often we pray and say Amen so fast that we don't even wait for an answer! So we pause for roughly 10 seconds after we say Amen to let the spirit communicate with us. He said we just need an added measure of Faith and we would baptize in the thousands. His words were, "If your mission can't baptize a thousand, no other mission can." So President did the math, that is 84 a month. Challenge accepted!
I was on exchanges with Byron Elders part of the week. Had some cool experiences there. I taught a recent convert who was part of a Polygamist colony and had to be interviewed by a general authority to get baptized! We actually have lots of Polygamist up here.
There's a first for everything. We gave blessing to a lady in the hospital who had been in labor for 24 hours and was having a difficult time giving birth. That was a stressful blessing haha.
We have been focusing a lot on family history as a finding tool lately. Some of our history makes it back to the 100's and even before Christ! And lots of Danish Kings!
Well that was my week. Elder Rasmusson hit his year mark this week so I bought him ice cream. I only have 7.5 months left. Crazy stuff. What I am going to do with my life is really occupying my mind lately. I truly think I may want to get a doctorate in Religious Education and Teach religion. I love teaching so much!
Happy Father's Day Dad! You seriously are an incredible example to me. I don't know how you and mom managed to raise such a righteous and active family. You truly are amazing! Have a great week and stay cool!