It's All About Service

Hey y’all! These past two weeks have zoomed by with some interesting things that happened along the way. If there was one thing we did a lot of, it was doctor visits. Nothing bad has happened, and it's good to know that the visits will soon be over haha. Actually, this last Friday, we carpooled with some other elders that had to go up to Raleigh for a doctor's visit, so that was a fun little road trip for the day!

There has been an emotional rollercoaster with Jake and Sophia, so I'll start with Jake. We ended up having to scrap their baptismal date after they revealed their true thoughts to bishop in a talk they had together. Jake still wants to talk with us and have us answer their questions, but Jake's not going to be baptized until they're willing/ready to accept and live ALL of the guidelines the Father asks of us to abide by. As for Sophia, she is doing really good and learns more every time we're together! One downside to things is that her mom does not think she is ready at all and demands that we wait for her to be 15 before she is baptized. Since we don’t want her mom to be any more angry, we accepted her request to delay her baptism until Sophia is all in and knows everything her mom wants her to know. Looks like I'll just be Johnny Appleseed out here and plant seeds for all of these future missionaries. LOL

If there is one thing I really enjoyed over these couple weeks, it was the kinds of service I got to do. For one lady, we had the chance to spread some dirt over by her house and have it at an angle where all the runoff water would be directed away from her garden. At a couple of other projects, I was able to speak some Spanish!!! While at habitat for humanity, they have me help people who are looking for certain things or need help loading things into their cars or trucks. I also helped a member move into their new home and they all spoke Spanish. Actually, the wife could only speak Spanish, so whenever she wanted to tell the other elders to do something, she would yell to me to translate lol. I love speaking Spanish and I really hope I can get better after the mission, but I wish I had even more chances to speak Portuguese! I need to master my Portuguese skills and get to Brazil ASAP so I can help the people I haven't gotten to meet and bring unto the fullness of the gospel! I pray I can return soon and that I can finish what I started 19 months ago!

What Are You Sharing With The World?

Legit – after I got off the phone with my family, I jumped into gear and got a whiteboard and scriptures prepped for my lesson with my new investigator Sophia. We came out of the gates with the plan of salvation and drew the picture of two holes and how Christ built a bridge over the first one, but we need to climb a ladder out of the second one to get to God. It was a great lesson and the spirit was strongly present there. Sophia received the answer she needed and said that she would like to be baptized, so we marked a date right then and there for the 5th of February, but we are most likely going to move it back to the 13th. The only obstacle we have is that her mom wants her to know, not just the teachings/doctrine of Christ, but ALL THE STORIES TOO. It's going to make things harder, but I have faith everything will work out and she is super strong. We've met with her quite a bit this last week and it's been fun being with her and her member bf, Ben. We also had a lesson with Jake and Glen and they will also be preparing themselves for baptism, but there is no set date for them yet. I had the opportunity to go on a quick one day exchange with Elder Jack. I had a great time and it was good working with a diligent missionary who has been in the mission almost as long as I have. It was like two pros pulling up to a pickle ball match, we just wiped the courts with our gospel and spiritual knowledge. We were able to watch the baptism of Mark who was taught by the Sunset Lake Elders. Sophia and Ben attended with us and they both really enjoyed themselves which made me super happy. In this week's missionary devotional, Elder and Sister Vinson (who are from Australia) talked about the message we as missionaries are here to share with the world. With that in mind, he broke down all of the 9 paragraphs of "The Restoration Proclamation". He also invited us to study it more and apply what is written into our teachings because they truly are inspired words given to the entire world from living prophets. So I invite you to read over that proclamation this week so we can talk about what we both learned/thought was interesting in the coming week:) Tchau!!