Great Things 7/23/2012

     This last week was a much better week than the week before was.  First of all, I did get that package of cookies last week and they are quite good.  Thanks mom.  But we had some great things happen last week.  When I first came here, we were teaching an 8 year old girl whos parents are divorced.  The dad is a less than stellar example of a member of the church apparently, and she lives with her nonmember mom and her boyfriend.  Like I said, we were teaching the girl to begin with, and she wants to be baptized, but we started shifting focus over to the mom (Amy) the last couple of weeks.  Because of her upbringing, and her relationships, she is without self confidence or self-worth, which is really sad.  Some great things happened last week in that her boyfriend is now out of the picture, and she is in a real humble spot in her life.  We had a lesson last week in which we focused on the fact that she is a child of god and that she has eternal potential and worth.  It went positively because she wanted to go to church, which she did yesterday.  Her member fellowshipper/friend was talking to her at the end of church and told her that if she was happy the way things were going right now in her life, that she can continue the way she is.  But if she wasn't happy, then to seriously consider baptism for herself.  After that was said she started tearing up and she said she was not happy right now.  She is in a real teachable spot right now in her life and I hope we can continue to help her.  We are having another lesson with her tonight in which we are going to watch, "You Matter To Him" by President Uchtdorf, which I would recommend everybody to read.  We also picked up a new investigator last week.  his name is Bruce and he was the most golden first contact I have ever had in my life.  He was a referral from a member of the ward and she had just met him outside his house while she was on her way to visit a friend.  She started talking to him and found out his wife passed away 6 months earlier.  He mentioned how he was sad that he would never see her again, to which she responded, well maybe you will.  That had sparked some interest in him and he was interested in meeting us.  When we met with him, he started talking about how he doesn't smoke or drink, and he gave up coffee and all these other things and how he is serious about getting into the church.  He asked us if it was okay to have a Book of Mormon and study it for himself.  He also told us that he was planning on coming to church whether or not we had met with him this week.  We have really high hopes for him.  It has been nice to be able to start building up a teaching pool again.  Things are starting to pick up for us, which is good.  Hope everybody has a great week and a good pioneer day.  Love you all.