Family and friends,
It
has been another amazing week for sure. I say it over and over and I'll
say it some more, missionary life is the life. I love being able to
just focus everything I do each day on inviting others to come closer to
Christ. The week has been interesting, but we've been moving forward
somehow. I'm just thankful we have a decent teaching pool as of now. If
we didn't have anyone to teach and we still couldn't go finding things
would be a lot tougher. I'm excited for this coming week though, we'll
be able to do some finding because we'll go on exchanges with a couple
different sets of elders. That's what our mission president suggested
for us to do, set up days where another set of Elders schedules as many
appointments as possible and then Elder Smith goes with them to the
lessons and one of them goes with me so we can tract and contact all
day. I've really missed finding these past two weeks. The hardest thing
is trying to use our afternoons and mornings productive. If we head out
and hit the streets hard in the mornings and afternoons or do service
then Elder Smith is in lots of pain for our lessons at night and then he
has a hard time paying attention to the lesson. So we do lots of making
phone calls and texts and messaging people over Facebook to try to get
as many lessons set up as possible with people already in our area book.
It's easy to get discouraged but we're both keeping up a really good
attitude and are trying to do everything we can and trusting that the
Lord will make everything work out if we really do our best.
Cristin is doing super well. We've pretty much taught her all the
lessons, we just have a few principles here and there that we need to go
over a little more specifically with her. Other than that she is on top
of things. She loved church this last week so much. She is doing great
at reading and studying and she takes really good notes. She has been
volunteering at church to help out with service projects and participate
in lots of activities. We'll probably be having her baptismal interview
this Wednesday and then she's getting baptized next Thursday on the 6th! Please continue to keep her in your prayers. Her conversion is such a miracle that I feel humbled to witness.
There's also Mike. He's an investigator that used to come to church
pretty regularly but we haven't been able to get a hold of him for the
last month or two. We met with him on Wednesday and he asked us if he could be baptize on July 7th in the Clark Fork River! Of course we said yes, but then he wasn't able to make it to church on Sunday
so we're pushing his baptism back a couple of weeks. He's a really cool
guy that has met with missionaries before elsewhere and is just now
ready to make the commitment and bring his less active wife back into
activity with him.
Friday
we had Zone Conference so that meant the Assistants were in town. Which
meant we got to go on exchanges with them! I love both of our
assistants, Elder Hoschouer and Elder Porter. I got to go on one final
exchange with Elder Hoschouer from Thursday night until Saturday
morning. It was really interesting to be doing missionary work together
almost 2 years after we first met each other in the MTC. It was so fun
to be together again. We did some solid missionary work and contacted
tons of cool people. We contacted a guy that's a Christian rapper and he
was showing us some of his stuff, it was pretty chill haha. It was
weird driving around Missoula with him again. We popped popcorn that
night and it burnt really bad so our entire apartment filled with smoke
and it smelt really bad. Then our last night together we swingy the
dollar store real quick and picked up a padlock and we signed it and put
it on the Missoula lock bridge. It was a tender moment. Also we had
dinner with the Griffins. He's our ward mission leader and she got
baptized last October when Elder Hoschouer was serving here in Missoula
4th Ward. They're basically the best. Pictures to follow.
Meetings this week were good. Zone Conference was really uplifting.
It was the first time that I was assigned to lead some training at a
Zone Conference so it was weird and a little intimidating but ultimately
I think it turned out to be a success. I got lots of cool insights to
finish off this transfer strong. Sunday
meetings were great and uplifting too. It was weird though because I
wasn't with my companion. Before you get all upset and accuse us of
being apostate let me explain. The high councilor over missionary work
in our Stake asked us to accompany him to the Thompson falls branch to
speak in church and do some visits. We couldn't leave our area because
we had lots of stuff to do so we just got permission from President
Wadsworth to go on Splits so I spent part of the day with our ward
mission leader, Bro Griffin.
Just a quick thought about keeping the sabbath day holy. In 3 Nephi
11-18 Jesus Christ visits the nephites at the temple in bountiful. They
are taught by Him and He institutes the Sacrament. In verse 1 of chapter
19 He leaves and ascends to heaven. Verses 2&3 describe the
excitement at they all had in anticipation of the Savior's return the
next day. It said "there were many, yea, an exceedingly great number,
[that] did labor exceedingly all that night, that they might be on the
morrow in the place where Jesus should show himself unto the multitude."
I guess I don't know what day the next day might have been, but I
suppose we could imagine it was the Sabbath. Or at least we can picture
that the day where Jesus manifests Himself to us each week is the
Sabbath because in the ordinances of the gospel the power of godliness
is manifest. When we take the Sacrament we experience the power of
godliness in a very real and personal way. Make every effort every
Sabbath Day to be in the place where Jesus Christ will show His power to
you.
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