Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:44
Hey!
Hey!
How are you? Isn't life great? This last week was a great as ever! The Lord really is blessing Elder Wood and me. A lot of really good things are happening in our area.
So, the first update. Bob is not doing too badly. He is really close to being baptized. He actually passed his interview. But, he isn't keeping the Sabbath day holy. It's an important commandment. The Zone Leaders advised us not to baptize him this week, but to push it back one more week. It makes sense to me. We aren't just here to get people baptized and increase church membership. We're here to help disciples come into the church. We need disciples that will come and be strong members forever. So we need to help everyone keep God's commandments, and receive the associated blessings. The Lord really gave it to us pretty clearly, that we have 6 days to work, then on the Sabbath, we are to rest from our temporal labors, and not make others work. A lot of the members here are really strict with Sabbath observance. There is one family that wont even turn on their cell phones on Sunday. They just really want to feel the Spirit of the day. But Bob just needs to switch his day off to Sunday instead of Saturday. He said he can. He just has to switch with his mom. They have a store together, but after than that, we'll baptized him.
Cherry is back on track. She kind of had some days where she was a little frustrated and smoked a lot. We gave her a lesson about patience. We read with her in Doctrine and Covenants 121:1-8. As we finished reading verse 8 she said, "patience... I don't have any!" Then we talked about how we can grow in patience and just like with any other spiritual gift, we can pray for the Lord to help us be more patient. Granted that means we will have a trial more likely than not, but in the end it will be for our benefit.
Then we were teaching her again the other day. We read with her about the Lamanites who buried their weapons of rebellion. We talked about how she needs to bury her rebellion, her cigarettes. She said she had quit in the past. She just needed something that she could use instead of cigarettes, whenever she wanted to smoke. Something that morning had told me to bring a pack of tic tacs that mom sent me. I didn't know why I would need tic tacs, but I took them. Then as we talked with her I told her I had felt prompted to bring the mints. I gave her the tic tacs and said if you want to smoke, eat some of these instead. She said it was nice to now have a choice--a better choice. She really seems dedicated this time. So that will be really good for her! Please keep her in your prayers.
Things have been really busy as of late. We don't really have time to go out tracting. That's what I felt like I did in Roi Et. For my first two transfers, all we did was tract that city over and over. But since then I just haven't had that much tracting time. This transfer, we haven't had any time to do more than 1 hour of tracting. I miss it. But we're trying to talk to as many people as we can. It's all about finding who is prepared and who isn't. And often we can find out in a few short minutes.
I've been thinking about something that I read in "Jesus The Christ." James E. Talmage said that the Savior had to discern who were to be the 12 that would be called as apostles. In a similar way, we have to discern who is being prepared by God. We need to find those whose heart is soft enough for the Spirit to change them. So, we're just trying to weed through people that we pass on the street, or see as we eat meals, in parks, or wherever they may be. We are finding some of them. Some say that they only want to study about Christianity. Others just want to talk to Americans. And then there are those who are investigators in Christ. That want to know Him and follow Him. Those are the people who we are looking for.
Sorry, there was a lot that happened this week, but I just can't think of all of it! But the Lord is blessing us.
I love you all. Be safe and keep the faith!
Love,
Elder Todd
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