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Monday, October 20, 2014

Elder Inman Letter October 20, 2014

Spiritual Pay Day!

More like a spiritual pay week! It was honestly the most rewarding week spiritually than I have had my entire mission. I don't even know where to begin. And it sounds like it was a great week back home as well!

Monday was more fun than spiritual. We got together as a zone to practice singing "High on a Mountain Top" for Stake Conference and then had a pumpkin carving contest. I made a Liahona and totally won haha.

Monday and pretty much every day this week we have been tracting. Tracting in Shepherd is kind of a joke because we are out in the boonies and have to find small pockets of houses or trailers. Fortunately the people here are generally nice with a few exceptions. We handed out probably 7 copies of the Book of Mormon while tracting this week which is better than usual. Although tracting is not the most effective tool for finding we kind of had no other option and knew the Lord would bless us for being diligent in seeking his prepared children.

The next day (Tuesday) we received a sweet referral. There is a 13 year old who was baptized in the Spokane mission this past June and moved back here to live with her grandparents. We got a call to teach the new member discussions to this girl and came to find out that the grandparents are inactive members of the RLDS (Community of Christ) church! So we taught a lesson there Tuesday and had a member with us. The grandparents are 100% supportive of taking the granddaughter (Kailee) to every activity and even stay with her at church on Sundays! They don't realize it yet, but we are teaching them in the form of the new member discussions :) Usually you bank on someone reading the Book of Mormon to gain a testimony. It's awkward when they already believe everything you do but have the wrong authority. Their copy of the Book of Mormon is modernized and there are added sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. Cool to look at any way :) They came to stake conference yesterday and stayed the whole time! Please pray for them. Their names are Walt and Debby Reany.

So that was one solid experience. Wednesday started an exchange with the Elders in Hardin. Elder Griffith went down while I stayed in Shepherd with Elder Bond, our third companion. Elder Bond is getting mid-transfer adjusted today..to Powell! Other crazy experiences happened this week that I won't mention but it's been quite the fiasco trying to help with several of these people in our zone get baptized. They all have the most ridiculous circumstances. But it's fun to be involved :)

Friday was awesome. Elder Bond and I went to go see a part-member/less-active family. The husband wasn't home so we decided that we would knock the trailer next door. There was only 3 homes in this little area. I knocked and opened with an approach about eternal families and Christ's Atonement making it all possible. This elderly lady had her daughter and grandchildren over, yet she came outside and sat with us on her porch. We shared the message of the Restoration and she accepted a baptismal date of November 15th! Blessings! Afterward we went to the ghetto gas station to use the restroom and started talking to the cashier. Turns out her sister and niece got baptized in our ward a few months ago and she said she wanted to meet when mid-terms are over!

Saturday. BEST.DAY.EVER. I heard news earlier in the week that the Davis' and Sister Greenwald (from Powell) were getting sealed to their 95 year old mother with Brother Davis as proxy for the father. Elder Rasmusson is in Butte, MT (about 4 hours away from Billings) so we were trying to figure out how we could both be there. The DAY BEFORE we figured out rides and surprised everyone at the temple! Lots of tears and hugs. I have never witnessed a sealing tillSaturday and it was beautiful. Such a powerful sealing and the sealer was a family friend from Powell (who I also knew). Elder Bond didn't want to go so I brought Elder Partridge with me (our District Leader) and we decided to make it a day exchange. We found another person that day to teach and I was on cloud 9. Such a rewarding day. I'll have more pictures next week from them :)

Saturday night and Sunday morning were stake conference. The church is doing something new where Salt Lake broadcasts to several stakes in a region. We were part of 61 stakes within Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Speakers included Elder Craig C. Christiansen (Presidency of the Seventy), Cheryl A. Esplin (Presidency of the General Primary), Elder David A. Bednar (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles), and Elder Richard G. Scott (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles). It was SO good! There was lots of focus on prayer. I loved Elder Bednar's talk. Some quotes:

"More important than dying for the Gospel, is LIVING for the Gospel."
"Living the Gospel is not hard. NOT living the Gospel is hard."

"The Lord does the Hastening of the work. We do not. Will we keep pace with the Lord's hastening of the work? Is the hastening happening in us?"

"Consecration is developing and dedicating something to a sacred purpose."

"Sacrifice only exists in mortality. There is no sacrifice in eternity."

To name a few :) We also sang Saturday night and sat in the choir seats for stake conference. We had help of the angels to sound as good as we did. I also got to see Eliza Cannel (not Eliza Johnson) whom I helped over a year ago in the singles ward and is now married in the temple :) SUCH A GREAT WEEK! Glad to hear things went well at the Phoenix temple open house. Bummed I am not there for it. Have a fantastic week!

Thank you Grandpa for the uplifting letters! I have such a strong testimony of Priesthood power and it is neat to hear the miracles you experienced on your mission. We will have to share stories with each other when I come back! Love you Grandpa and Grandma!