Week 8: Camdenton, MO

Received this as a text message this morning (8.24.2017). This would have been after the letter below was sent. 

Hello! This week has been so amazing!!

We went tracting for 1.5 hours, and we had great success! We found a member, C____, who didn't even know there was a church here! He moved here from California, and he's great! In that same complex, we found a great guy, J____, who is totally prepared for the Book of Mormon!! He is amazing!  

08.21.2017

We went to St. Clair, MO for the eclipse Wednesday, hence the late e-mail.  Instead of just watching it, we set up two booths, one in Sullivan, and one in St. Clair(about 30 miles from each other). We printed out all of the pages of the Book of Mormon, and asked people to highlight a page with all of the references to Christ, to show that the Book of Mormon testifies of Christ.  I was sitting on a bench across from the booth, reading from the BOM with Pres. Loveland, my Mission President, when a 26ish year old guy came up to us, sat down, and asked me the question "What's the difference between the Book of Mormon and the Bible?"  Pres. Loveland and I taught him for approximately an hour and a half, ranging from the Restoration, to the Book of Mormon, and even to deep doctrine on the three kingdoms, and how we achieve what we deserve (see D&C 88:22).  His name is C____, and when we testified of the power of Moroni 10:3-5, he said "let's just pray right now", and so we just prayed right there, people swarming around us, and it was one of the coolest things I have ever experienced!! The spirit was so strong, and I know that he felt it too.  He took us to meet his family, and they're the sweetest people ever.  The eclipse was pretty cool, too.  

Last Sunday, the M____ family came to church.  Elder Brown and I made contact with them for the first time on transfer day, the third lesson I ever had.  There is a 32 year old mother, who along with a 14 year old daughter are baptized.  There is a 47 year old father figure, and the mother has two sons, 12 and 10. The children have been coming to church for the past couple of weeks, the father figure was in the process of converting to Catholicism, and the mother worked 8-16 hour shifts 6  days a week at a nursing home as a nurse.  Elder Brown's last Sunday was this Sunday, and the bishopric capitalized on it by having him talk in sacrament meeting, playing the organ, and we taught Gospel Principles AND Relief Society haha.  WE capitalized on this by inviting EVERYONE to hear him speak, and the Lord had many tender mercies to give the M____ family and others to get to church on Sunday.  The mother had a 16 day streak of working planned, because they were short on staff, and her boss told her to take Sunday off, to recuperate.  We didn't know, but the whole M____ family showed up to church, along with many others!!  We had a total of 16 investigators and 9 LA at church, and that isn't even the crazy part!!  The father figure, R____, paid attention in sacrament meeting, and when it was over made a beeline for the stake president and bishop.  He said "I want to be baptized.  Today".  He still has some things overcome, but he is making lots of progress, and we can tell he is in it for the long haul!  

On Tuesday, yesterday, my companion and I spent 3 hours learning how to install laminate, and then Elder Brown had to go to a different area to interview an investigator for baptism, so I was on an exchange.  We decided to visit a referral from that area, and so we did that.  That whole day I had been praying for a new investigator, and I had faith that it would happen.  We got to the house, and the referral wasn't there, but his family was, so we gave them a card with our phone number on it for the man, J____, to contact us.  We left the house, and felt prompted to go tracting.  We went to only one house, but we talked to a man about the Book of Mormon, gave him a copy, and got his contact information.  The first and last house we tracted that day!  We then went to walmart to get some food, because we didn't have time to yesterday with all of the running around we had to do(we woke up at 4:30 am and didn't get back to the apartment until about 9:45 pm) and so we stopped by on our way home.  I had noticed a construction logo on the back of a mustang in the driveway of the referral's house, and in the cashier's line, we saw a man with a bright orange shirt with the same logo on the back.  I asked him if he knew J____, and he said that he was J____!!!  We talked a while with him, and he explained to us how his old church didn't support him at all when he was having a tough time in his life, and his wife is currently looking for a church.  I am so excited to teach them!!  This week has helped me solidify and build my faith in so many areas, and I'm so grateful to be on a mission!!  

Scripture of the week: Enos!

I love y'all!