Hi Family,
Not much time today, the place where we use the
computers is closing in 10 minutes. It is confirmed, I am being
transferred. Packing and wrapping up my time here in Gainesville today.
Elder
Chadwick's training is now complete and President Barry called just a
few minutes ago to release me as District Leader. I breathed a sigh of
relief thinking that I would now be a regular proselyting missionary
wherever I end up going. HA! As soon as he released me and thanked me
for my service, he turned right around and told me I would be a zone
leader again. Gar. Lol, no such thing as rest in the mission field!
We had a lot of excellent missionaries go home this morning (in
order to not be traveling on Thanksgiving). Elder Grant was one of
them. We were both trained by Elder Summers long ago which made us
brothers and he was always one of my favorite mission leaders and then
companions. In some ways, I feel like the longer I'm here in the FJM
the fewer people I know. I'm old!!!
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving this year! I think that makes 4 years
in a row that I haven't been able to join the family for this day, but I
am grateful for you all. Tear it up with the frisbee at Grandma's
house this year!
"Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations." - Psalm 100:4-5
Lovies,
Elder M
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Teaching Primary in WA
Yesterday was great! We had a combined sacrament meeting with the
English ward because the primary was doing their yearly program. After
that Elder Haro and I were also asked to teach a 40 minute lesson to the
primary about missionary work. We kind of based our lesson around the
articles of faith because it is something that most of them know. I
asked them how many of them wanted to serve missions and about half of
them already had decided that they wanted to! One even said he wanted
to go to Finland because that is where his grandpa is from. I was
surprised at how much they had already thought of missionary work. It
was great to work with the kids for a day.
We met a great family that was a referral from the zone leaders.
The family is from Guatemala but has lived here for several years. We
met the mother and 3 kids and then the mother's brother. I think there
are more people living in the house because people were in and out a
lot. We taught the restoration to them and explained the Book of
Mormon. We realized that we had a problem though because none of them
can read. I guess they lived in a place in Guatemala that didn't really
have any formal education. We plan on just reading it with them in our
lessons until we can get the Book of Mormon on disk so they can listen
to it. The 19 year old is in school learning to read and speak English
but she is at about a 2nd or 3rd grade reading level so still has a ways
to go before she can read the Book of Mormon to her family. They were
very open to learning and very welcoming to us and the only thing
that may keep them from progressing is the distance they live away from
us and the church. They are on the other side of the zone (about 25
minutes away) and no members live close to them to give them a ride. We
are trying to maintain contact on the phone with them, because we cant
even be up there as much as we would like.
We haven't been able to talk with the women that was fed negative info on the BofM but we still plan on swinging by.
We had 4 people that had baptismal dates that fell off this week.
All of them were the same thing: work. That is still the biggest thing
that is stalling all of our investigators. For them it is either go to
church or go to work and many of them are required to work on Sundays or
lose their jobs. I am pretty sure if the nation followed the sabbath
day and the businesses closed (not too likely to happen) we would be
baptizing and finding multiple people a week. Our investigators are
receptive to listen if you can ever get ahold of them. One man told us
to call him in 2 weeks and he would see if he would be having a day off
of work by then that we could come by. We can't really help someone
progress very well if we can only see him once every 3 weeks. We are in
100% finding mode right now. Hahah! It is great some people in the
Spanishy apartments in the
area have started to recognize me because I have knocked on their door
multiple times seeing if they want to learn. Someday they will start
taking the lessons. :)
I think I am doing great though. Spiritually I feel good, my
companion and I are working hard, and I think something will come out of
the woodwork pretty soon.
Thanks for the support!
Thanks for the support!
Elder B.
Jennie's Baptism in FL
Happy birthdays this coming week to the younger women of the Howell/Miller clan! ....I'm glad you reminded me, Mom, otherwise I would have completely forgotten!
Thanks for sending the letters/info - I'll look forward to getting that. I am quite positive that I'll be transferred in another week though, so don't send me anything else within the next couple weeks before I get you my new address.
Elder Chadwick and I had an epic week as we finished teaching Jennie the commandments and preparing her for her baptism. Words can't even describe how wonderful the service was on Saturday night, but it was by far a highlight of my mission thus far. Half the ward showed up to support, the father of her member fellowship family baptized her, and the Spirit was strong! Incredibly, one of our investigators came and he also brought his wife who to this point had been strongly against even listening as we taught her husband. She would leave the room every time we started discussing the gospel. I think this will turn a new page on his progression, because there was no denying the Spirit and the love that was present that night and I know she felt some of it.
This week has had some rather unique experiences as well. I spent a day up in High Springs on companion exchanges with the elders up in that branch; I never would have guessed it here in the Bible Belt, but apparently there is a very high concentration of Hare Krishna devotees in Alachua County, FL. There's even a Krishna temple up there. The weird thing was, they totally believe in Jesus Christ as a "spiritual master" but don't see any problems with meshing his teachings with their religion. I dunno, I can't claim to understand much of their beliefs, but the paintings they showed me of Krishna depicted a feminine looking, blue man with four arms whom they worship as God. Definitely an interesting day spent attempting to teach several of them the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
I've decided that kids are pretty epic - they can be so spiritually sensitive. After Jennie's baptismal interview, we read some of 3 Nephi and then asked her 8 year old granddaughter to say the prayer. She had never prayed before and so I had to show her how and prompt her on everything to say, but even though she was repeating me word for word, the way she said it and the absolute sincerity just flooded the room with the Spirit. Wow!
"And behold, he preached the word unto your fathers, and a mighty change was also wrought in their hearts, and they humbled themselves and put their trust in the true and living God. And behold, they were faithful until the end; therefore they were saved....And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?" - Alma 5:13,26
Good luck with the job search. Love you all!
Elder M.
Monday, November 5, 2012
WA Update
Mom!
Thank you for the picture of Kaden, Landen, and Teyah. I honestly
don't think I would have recognized Teyah if you hadn't said that was
her. Obviously, (just as McKay said) she looks like a miniature Jaclyn,
but I haven't seen a picture of her in ages.
Sounds like Gabe and Joe are at least having fun being close to
Jacob and Daniel and going hunting with them. If you don't want to have
them blasting away at little birdies maybe you can suggest clay pigeon
shooting. I don't know how (because we never owned a shotgun) but I was
pretty good at that when I went shooting with some friends.
This week was pretty good. We have been doing a lot of finding as
well as trying to contact the investigators the hermanas were teaching.
We have contacted most of them and have taught several of them. We
contacted by phone one lady that is 65 that the hermanas were teaching.
She told us she loved having the hermanas over and learning but that
her husband wouldn't approve of us men coming over to teach even when he
was in the room with us. Really, this has man has nothing to fear of
us trying to steal his wife or something. A little frustrating because
she was progressing really well, and now we are on hold as we find
someone in the relief society from the branch who could go over and
continue teaching her.
Through contacting and tracting we were able to find several
more people that we met and put on date for baptism. None of them were a
super solid date, but it at least shows that they are willing and open
to learn and know what we are working towards. We have follow up
lessons scheduled and we are hoping to really determine their interest
level.
Sadly, the lady and her husband with two kids that I wrote about
last week dropped us. We called her on the phone and she said she had
been reading the Book of Mormon and she came across a lot of things that
didn't match up with the Bible. It sounded a little fishy, and so we
asked her what things she found or what questions she had. She really
wouldn't tell us and kind of dodged around the question. We are
thinking that she was anti-ed by her brother or a friend or something
because she was so open and welcoming to us the first time we met her,
and then it was like a night and day difference. We plan on going over
to her house this week just to see what's going on.
We just started as a mission to read the Book of Mormon all of the
way through before the end of the year. We have to read about 3-4
chapters a day, but it actually isn't that bad. I have enjoyed it so
far. At first I thought that going through it that fast may reduce how
much I got out of the reading, but that hasn't been the case so far. The
Book of Mormon has power no matter how fast or slow you read it. It
has been great!
Well, not much else to report from lovely Washington. Love you all!
Elder B.
Gainesville Update
Hi Mom!
Glad to hear that you made it nicely into your new place. With all of your heating options, you may be able to keep the house at a comfortable 80 degrees year round no matter what the outside temperature! I was always miserable in the Logan winters, but I attribute much of that to hiking up Old Main hill to campus every single morning at insanely early hours while a frigid wind blasted out of the canyon and down the neck of my coat. I'm surprised I still have my ears, nose, and fingers after being a student there for 3 winters.
Thanks for the photo of Jaclyn's kids. I decided that Kaden and Landen look like Zach while Teyah is a mini version of Jaclyn. How old is she now? I don't even remember when she was born....
Well, we found out Gabriel lived outside of our area, so we had to turn him over to another set of missionaries, but they are continuing to help him progress towards his baptism. God blessed us though for that sacrifice of having to give up our investigator by blessing us with two more people who now have dates! One is a man named Charles who has been married to an active member for the last 20 years. We finished our discussions with him this last Wednesday and he told us he knew he would be baptized someday but refused to set a date. On Saturday, our ward mission leader's family picked up his wife for the ward temple trip and Charles was left alone to think all day. When they returned at the end of the night, he told them that he wanted to be baptized on December 2nd! Wow! It's the absolute best when it's just God and the investigator figuring things out - so solid!
We also have an investigator named Jenny that had been progressing in the past, but had avoided us for about 3 weeks in a row. We were finally able to schedule another appointment and went into the lesson half expecting to drop her. As we discussed the Doctrine of Christ, the ideas of faith and repentance impacted her quite a bit and the Spirit was there very strong. When we came to baptism, she jumped on the idea and told us she wanted to be baptized as soon as her daughter from out of town could have a clear schedule to come to Gainesville. WOOT! Amazingly, her daughter usually works weekends, but for some random reason already had the next Saturday and Sunday cleared. Coincidence? I think not! So now Jenny is rapidly progressing towards baptism this weekend on the 10th. Her young granddaughter that lives with her was also playing in the background during our discussion. Apparently she was listening in because after we left she told Jenny that she wanted to be baptized too! Become as a little child....we're hoping to schedule her for the 17th.
Every three months we have personal interviews with President Barry and mine happened to be this last Thursday. Oh boy, talk about rough - I still have 5 months left but he started asking me if I go home soon. "NO!" However, figuring that as long as we were on the topic, I asked him for an extension. He smiled and said he would love to, but the mission department doesn't allow that anymore without an extreme circumstance. Whatever that means. I suspect that I'll have to use my creativity and generate an extreme circumstance that will allow me to extend the mission past next March! =D For some reason, the interview then turned to me being older and he began hinting that I should prepare for marriage after the mission. "President!! I'm still set apart! I can't talk about that. I don't even want to think about it yet!" Wow, most stressful interview I've ever been in. Moral of the story: please, everyone, DO NOT mention how much time I have remaining or tell me that I'm a menace to society. I would like to focus on the mission while I'm a missionary. Thank you very much.
Terry, Jacob, Mom, and some fellow elders here have all been kind enough to alert me to the event of Lucasfilm LTD being sold to Disney. Star Wars 7 in the works! What do you know, my senior yearbook entry was prophetic after all - "Star Wars Forever!" =D Terry, I'm sure the old glory days will be easily resurrected. And now that we're independent there's nothing to stop us from camping out for a week at the theater and hitting up the first midnight showing. What do you think - could you beat me at Star Wars trivia now that I've been out of the loop for a couple years?
Anyway, enough of that distraction. I love you all!
(Happy belated birthday, to Dad!)
Elder M.
Glad to hear that you made it nicely into your new place. With all of your heating options, you may be able to keep the house at a comfortable 80 degrees year round no matter what the outside temperature! I was always miserable in the Logan winters, but I attribute much of that to hiking up Old Main hill to campus every single morning at insanely early hours while a frigid wind blasted out of the canyon and down the neck of my coat. I'm surprised I still have my ears, nose, and fingers after being a student there for 3 winters.
Thanks for the photo of Jaclyn's kids. I decided that Kaden and Landen look like Zach while Teyah is a mini version of Jaclyn. How old is she now? I don't even remember when she was born....
Well, we found out Gabriel lived outside of our area, so we had to turn him over to another set of missionaries, but they are continuing to help him progress towards his baptism. God blessed us though for that sacrifice of having to give up our investigator by blessing us with two more people who now have dates! One is a man named Charles who has been married to an active member for the last 20 years. We finished our discussions with him this last Wednesday and he told us he knew he would be baptized someday but refused to set a date. On Saturday, our ward mission leader's family picked up his wife for the ward temple trip and Charles was left alone to think all day. When they returned at the end of the night, he told them that he wanted to be baptized on December 2nd! Wow! It's the absolute best when it's just God and the investigator figuring things out - so solid!
We also have an investigator named Jenny that had been progressing in the past, but had avoided us for about 3 weeks in a row. We were finally able to schedule another appointment and went into the lesson half expecting to drop her. As we discussed the Doctrine of Christ, the ideas of faith and repentance impacted her quite a bit and the Spirit was there very strong. When we came to baptism, she jumped on the idea and told us she wanted to be baptized as soon as her daughter from out of town could have a clear schedule to come to Gainesville. WOOT! Amazingly, her daughter usually works weekends, but for some random reason already had the next Saturday and Sunday cleared. Coincidence? I think not! So now Jenny is rapidly progressing towards baptism this weekend on the 10th. Her young granddaughter that lives with her was also playing in the background during our discussion. Apparently she was listening in because after we left she told Jenny that she wanted to be baptized too! Become as a little child....we're hoping to schedule her for the 17th.
Every three months we have personal interviews with President Barry and mine happened to be this last Thursday. Oh boy, talk about rough - I still have 5 months left but he started asking me if I go home soon. "NO!" However, figuring that as long as we were on the topic, I asked him for an extension. He smiled and said he would love to, but the mission department doesn't allow that anymore without an extreme circumstance. Whatever that means. I suspect that I'll have to use my creativity and generate an extreme circumstance that will allow me to extend the mission past next March! =D For some reason, the interview then turned to me being older and he began hinting that I should prepare for marriage after the mission. "President!! I'm still set apart! I can't talk about that. I don't even want to think about it yet!" Wow, most stressful interview I've ever been in. Moral of the story: please, everyone, DO NOT mention how much time I have remaining or tell me that I'm a menace to society. I would like to focus on the mission while I'm a missionary. Thank you very much.
Terry, Jacob, Mom, and some fellow elders here have all been kind enough to alert me to the event of Lucasfilm LTD being sold to Disney. Star Wars 7 in the works! What do you know, my senior yearbook entry was prophetic after all - "Star Wars Forever!" =D Terry, I'm sure the old glory days will be easily resurrected. And now that we're independent there's nothing to stop us from camping out for a week at the theater and hitting up the first midnight showing. What do you think - could you beat me at Star Wars trivia now that I've been out of the loop for a couple years?
Anyway, enough of that distraction. I love you all!
(Happy belated birthday, to Dad!)
Elder M.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Work Picking Up in WA
Hey Family!!!!
It was good to hear that the move went well. It sounds like it was
another close close call from being in a cardboard box. It sounds like
a beautiful piece of property.
McKay, to answer your question from several weeks ago, right now we
have 91 companionships in the mission. We just received news this past
week of the huge amount of missionaries that have sent in their mission
papers since the change 3 weeks ago in general conference. Usually an
average of 300 missionaries send in papers each week. In the past 3
weeks there have been over 4,000 to send in papers!!!!!! Yikes, like
McKay, I have honestly no idea where we will stick the new
missionaries. It is amazing though. President Larkin told us that was
enough to fill 65 missions completely full!!!
My companion and I are getting along great. Since I already pretty
much knew him it wasn't too bad of a change. Haha. He is great and we
get along just fine. He goes home in a month now but is still working
hard so I am thankful for that. One thing I will not put up with is a
trunky missionary.
I had a pretty good week. I was able to have an excellent exchange
with a brand new missionary in the mission and in our district. He
came to my area and because he doesn't know any Spanish was pretty lost
in all of the teaching situations. Haha. We had a great time and he
seems pretty cool. He already knows multiple people in the mission
because they all went to high school together. He has been having a
hard time adjusting to the mission because right as he got here the rain
hit and they put him on a bike. What a fun way to start your mission.
We had a great miracle happen when we were together though. That day I
had called a investigator that we haven't seen for about a month and a
half. He is the man that just walked into church that one Sunday. We
lost contact with him because he has been working crazy hours up in the
mountains 4 hours away cutting firewood for a company. He gets
up at about 3:30 a.m. every morning to drive to work and then doesn't
return home until 10 p.m. Not a very good schedule to see the
missionaries. When I called him he said he was still super busy. That
night at about 7 he said that a miracle happened and he got off work
early! He asked us to meet him in 10 minutes at the church building!
During the lesson we read in the Book of Mormon, and he said that he
already believes it is true and knows that he needs to work towards
baptism. He also wants to come to church and get to know the members
better. The only thing holding him back is his work. He has applied
for another job that will give him regular hours and hopefully he gets
it so we can start teaching him again. It was great to see him again
though. He still has a strong desire to learn.
We also received a great referral for a family that we have taught
once and are going to teach tonight as well. They don't know too much
about religion at all, but said they have been to several christian
churches in the past and they were all weird. Not sure what happened in
those experiences, but we are going to try and work with them so they
feel comfortable with us and coming out to church. We only talked with
the dad briefly because he was working on a car. We got along well with
the two kids and the mom though right away.
To answer a question from Grandma and Grandpa, we are not sure why the sisters were taken out. I think the main reason is just lack of hermanas right now to keep all of the areas open. I am sure that will change really shortly and that they will be back within several months. We have taken over their investigators for the time being, but some of their main investigators have been a little tricky to contact because we dont know their days off work or anything like that. Looking at the teaching records some have really good potential and one even was one date for baptism for November. I think they may have taken a week long vacation though because their son has been home but the parents haven't. We have some really good potential that we are working with and we have high hopes for the coming weeks. This is such an exciting time to be in the mission field. There is so much excitment in the work right now. What an great time to serve!!!!!!!!!!!
To answer a question from Grandma and Grandpa, we are not sure why the sisters were taken out. I think the main reason is just lack of hermanas right now to keep all of the areas open. I am sure that will change really shortly and that they will be back within several months. We have taken over their investigators for the time being, but some of their main investigators have been a little tricky to contact because we dont know their days off work or anything like that. Looking at the teaching records some have really good potential and one even was one date for baptism for November. I think they may have taken a week long vacation though because their son has been home but the parents haven't. We have some really good potential that we are working with and we have high hopes for the coming weeks. This is such an exciting time to be in the mission field. There is so much excitment in the work right now. What an great time to serve!!!!!!!!!!!
Love you all,
Elder B.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Work Picking Up in Gainesville
Hi Mom!
Glad to hear that you found a new place to live and are not living in a U-Haul truck. That's pretty remarkable how you were able to load the truck in faith and sign for a new place that evening and move in. God will always provide a way!
Hurricane Sandy passed us by without too much more than a lot of clouds and some cold weather. I don't remember it getting this cold until December last year and I was 250 miles further north in South Carolina. You're right though, people are telling us that it will be pretty bad when it hits up around the D.C./New York area tomorrow. Lots of flooding, lots of damage. A good time for people to be humble, remember God, and repent. Also a good opportunity for lots of love and service and opportunities for hearts to change.
This week has been a lot of fun. I was on companion exchanges in the 3rd Ward with Elder Lisonbee and they've really been struggling lately with finding new investigators and not having anyone to teach. We headed out on bikes and just started contacting everyone. By the end of the day we had four new investigators - a single father looking for a better life; a young woman who has never known peace even though her dad is a Baptist pastor; and a great couple where the wife had grown up in Ogden, had gone to seminary for four years, and already believes most of what we teach! God is good. The next day I went on another exchange with the Zone Leaders and had a blast re-uniting with Elder Grant in the 5th ward. He's one of the best missionaries I've ever known - down to his last 3 weeks in the mission and still 100% focused on the work. We stepped it up a notch and had several back to back lessons that brought the Spirit so strongly and were able to set 3 baptismal dates that day alone. Great day.
Elder Chadwick and I were able to start teaching a young man last night who had gone through bad experiences with missionaries in the past. Apparently they had pressured him a lot and he threw up a lot of barriers. That was last year. In the past few months, he read through the entire Book of Mormon and had a change of heart. He's still not entirely sure, but he approached us with the idea of being baptized in December around Christmas, so we take that as a positive sign. ;) Once again, it shows the power that is in the scriptures. The Book of Mormon changes lives! (Or more accurately, the Spirit changes lives and the Spirit testifies as we read the Book of Mormon!)
I'm down to my last 3 weeks in Gainesville (I suspect) and Elder Chadwick and I have some bold plans to finish up his training. We're hoping to have 2 baptisms (possibly 3) before I leave with the progressing investigators that we have. One of them is named Gabriel. I contacted him on Facebook about a month ago (he's an online friend of a recent convert) and we started talking online. Two weeks ago he randomly called us and said, "Elders, I need to change my life. Can we meet?" YES! So we started meeting at a Burger King and have taught him a lot about the Atonement and Repentance. He's been heavy into drugs and various other sins for most of his life, but that night after our first lesson, he dumped out all of his narcotics and flushed them away and has been clean for the last 10 days. I've been very surprised and overjoyed with his comprehension of total repentance extending to all aspects of his life. We hadn't even taught him the law of chastity yet, but he told us that since our first meeting, several women have tried to hit on him and he flat out refused telling them that his life is given to Jesus now. Whenever he feels tempted, he turns to the Book of Mormon and finds great strength from it. He was blown away by the Spirit as we read Joseph Smith History with him and that's when he told us he wants to be baptized. We have his date set for the 11th of November. I've really gained a witness as a missionary that no matter what a person has done or been in life, if we truly want to repent, Christ allows us to change and takes the burdens of the past away. I've seen it time and again. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isaiah 1:18).
God is great, missions are amazing, and I love being a part of this!
Elder M.
Glad to hear that you found a new place to live and are not living in a U-Haul truck. That's pretty remarkable how you were able to load the truck in faith and sign for a new place that evening and move in. God will always provide a way!
Hurricane Sandy passed us by without too much more than a lot of clouds and some cold weather. I don't remember it getting this cold until December last year and I was 250 miles further north in South Carolina. You're right though, people are telling us that it will be pretty bad when it hits up around the D.C./New York area tomorrow. Lots of flooding, lots of damage. A good time for people to be humble, remember God, and repent. Also a good opportunity for lots of love and service and opportunities for hearts to change.
This week has been a lot of fun. I was on companion exchanges in the 3rd Ward with Elder Lisonbee and they've really been struggling lately with finding new investigators and not having anyone to teach. We headed out on bikes and just started contacting everyone. By the end of the day we had four new investigators - a single father looking for a better life; a young woman who has never known peace even though her dad is a Baptist pastor; and a great couple where the wife had grown up in Ogden, had gone to seminary for four years, and already believes most of what we teach! God is good. The next day I went on another exchange with the Zone Leaders and had a blast re-uniting with Elder Grant in the 5th ward. He's one of the best missionaries I've ever known - down to his last 3 weeks in the mission and still 100% focused on the work. We stepped it up a notch and had several back to back lessons that brought the Spirit so strongly and were able to set 3 baptismal dates that day alone. Great day.
Elder Chadwick and I were able to start teaching a young man last night who had gone through bad experiences with missionaries in the past. Apparently they had pressured him a lot and he threw up a lot of barriers. That was last year. In the past few months, he read through the entire Book of Mormon and had a change of heart. He's still not entirely sure, but he approached us with the idea of being baptized in December around Christmas, so we take that as a positive sign. ;) Once again, it shows the power that is in the scriptures. The Book of Mormon changes lives! (Or more accurately, the Spirit changes lives and the Spirit testifies as we read the Book of Mormon!)
I'm down to my last 3 weeks in Gainesville (I suspect) and Elder Chadwick and I have some bold plans to finish up his training. We're hoping to have 2 baptisms (possibly 3) before I leave with the progressing investigators that we have. One of them is named Gabriel. I contacted him on Facebook about a month ago (he's an online friend of a recent convert) and we started talking online. Two weeks ago he randomly called us and said, "Elders, I need to change my life. Can we meet?" YES! So we started meeting at a Burger King and have taught him a lot about the Atonement and Repentance. He's been heavy into drugs and various other sins for most of his life, but that night after our first lesson, he dumped out all of his narcotics and flushed them away and has been clean for the last 10 days. I've been very surprised and overjoyed with his comprehension of total repentance extending to all aspects of his life. We hadn't even taught him the law of chastity yet, but he told us that since our first meeting, several women have tried to hit on him and he flat out refused telling them that his life is given to Jesus now. Whenever he feels tempted, he turns to the Book of Mormon and finds great strength from it. He was blown away by the Spirit as we read Joseph Smith History with him and that's when he told us he wants to be baptized. We have his date set for the 11th of November. I've really gained a witness as a missionary that no matter what a person has done or been in life, if we truly want to repent, Christ allows us to change and takes the burdens of the past away. I've seen it time and again. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isaiah 1:18).
God is great, missions are amazing, and I love being a part of this!
Elder M.
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