I'm
glad to hear about Alisa!!! I'm sure she'll be a great missionary :)
you can send this to her from me, but i'll also write her this week-- Alisa,
I am so excited that you are going on a mission! You will love it and
you will be a great missionary! Our awesome debate skills are super
valuable. However, you have to learn to use them to teach with the
spirit. My MTC district leader said to me, "Kameron, do not bible
bash! You will win, but don't do it!" I think the same advice applies
to you. The Lord blesses us with gifts, but we have to use them to
provide an opportunity for the spirit to teach our investigators and not
rely on the arm of the flesh. I can't wait to hear where you are
going!!"
About this week--
We
struggled this week. We taught very few investigators. A is still
our all-star. I think I talked about her before. She has a quad. And I
don't know if I mentioned it, but she now has a desire to serve a
mission.
G is a woman in our area. She came last week to sacrament meeting with us
when I gave my talk. She seemed to enjoy it, but she didn't come to
church this week. The only investigator we had at sacrament was A.
:/
Another investigator is S. She's a friend of a member at an "assisted living" sort of
center. The member is D, and she recently had her foot
amputated. Pretty sad... But she met S at this facility. S is
an older woman with Parkinsons and Dementia. She has a VERY strong
belief and testimony in Jesus Christ, and so far has been VERY
responsive to what we have taught her. She was going to a
non-denominational church before, but with her illness I don't think
she'll ever make it to church. I'm not entirely sure what will happen
there but I hope for the best!!
Our focus of late has
actually been reactivation. I counted our attendance again this week and
we had 64. We can do better... Our branch roster is 9 pages long, about
12 familys per page, and we only have 64 people at church. It's pretty
rough. But we taught a lot of RCLA (recent convert, less active) lessons
this week. We're hoping that if we can get more member support, we can
find non-member friends and help the part-member families better. So
we're working on that :) It's a good start... But it's still
discouraging to only teach a few investigator lessons, and only have 1
investigator come to church.
Yesterday we were able to
attend a baptism in Shallotte!! It's a great experience, really!! Its
incredible to think now about the step toward Christ people take when
they're baptized by someone who holds the proper authority!!
Another experience-- I
went on my first exchange this week with Elder Blackwell from
Whiteville.!!
He's way cool. I really enjoyed
the time I had with him :) We were fortunate enough to teach a member
in his area who they contacted very recently. Her name is Y. . She requested a blessing. For some reason,
Elder Blackwell decided to have me give the blessing. I forgot to
mention this before, but I gave my first blessing about a month ago in
the MTC to my companion, Elder Wagner. So this was my second priesthood
blessing. It was really strange... I felt like I was just reciting
something that someone was whispering in my ear. Super neat!! I'm not
sure where things will go with her though.
Sorry, I didn't really
write a lot this week. Not a lot honestly happened... We're going to
work harder this week though. Hopefully appointments don't fall through
as much, and maybe we can have more investigator attendance at sacrament
meeting :)
I think the letter thing
works great!!! I loved having your letters, and it was a great
opportunity to think about what to write throughout the week. Just a
heads up, I think it takes about 6 days for things to get sent to me,
not 3. Because it has to be forwarded from the mission home :/ So just
keep that in mind.
Spiritual thought comes from True To The Faith this week, on pages 74 and 75--
"Alma
said, 'All things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all
things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea and also
all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there
is a supreme creator' (Alma 30:44)
From time to time, ponder the beauties of creation: trees, flowers,
animals, mountains, the waves of the ocean, a newborn child. Take time
to gaze into the heavens, where the courses of the stars and planets are
evidence of 'God moving in his majesty and power' (see D&C
88:41-47)
I
would challenge everyone that they take a moment this week to ponder
this message. To slow down in our busy lives and literally stop to smell
the flowers. Something I have really missed out here is the mountains.
But this message is so true!! Everything testifies that God lives and he
loves us. I challenge everyone to look for examples of his love in
their life this week :)
Well,
it's time to go shop for food. I'll send a package. I hope everyone is
doing ok!! Hopefully Kaiti's symptoms have decreased. She didn't email
me this week, but that's ok. That's what repentance is for ;)
I love you all, and I
keep you in my prayers!! Keep me updated on life, I'm interested in the
election so maybe send me a little something updating me on that would
be nice, but otherwise I'm doing just great here :) I love Southport, I
love my companion, I love the gospel, and I love the Lord!!! Best of
luck to everyone. HURRAH FOR ISRAEL
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