Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Work Hard and See Miracles 1/21/2013


Hi Everyone,    

     Another great week in Moses Lake.  A lot of awesome things happened this week.  First of all I have heard that Utah has been getting a ton of snow recently.  I don't know if thats true, but we haven't gotten any here.  Well, at least in Moses Lake.  The rest of our mission has been getting a lot=(  I miss snow. 

     Anyway though, we have had some good lessons with our investigators starting with Marcus and Melissa.  We have been talking about a new day for them to be baptized on since they missed their date on the 5th of January, but they are getting married on March 11 and have decided that they want to be baptized on March 23.  This is a great step for them and they are committed to it.  They love going to church and they really enjoy the members of the ward.

     Jacob is also progressing quickly.  He was at church yesterday and we had a lesson with him after church.  He has the beginnings of an incredible testimony.  Whenever we teach him he tells us about how much it makes sense to him and how he really feels he believes it all.  Forest is a wonderful example for him to follow as well.  Jacob has started going to mutual as well and is getting real good fellowship from the youth.  He is right on track and excited for his baptism on Feb 16th.

     We had a lesson with Jannette and Jose yesterday about the Book of Mormon and committed them to read from it everyday.  Their kind of a miracle story.  I don't know if I told it last week, but a little more than a year ago, Jannettes cousin passed away, and she had joined the church about a year previous.  It was pretty sudden from what I've been able to gather and she didn't have the money for a funeral or burial, so the ward stepped in and started a fund raiser for her and they were able to have a funeral for her last year.  Fast forward a year and the relief society president at the time had an impression that she needed to call Jannette and see how she was doing.  They had had no contact now for at least a year but the impression was getting stronger and stronger so she called her up.  She decided to call just hours before we had scheduled our church tour with them.  Sister Hogsett (the relief society president) was able to talk briefly about her feelings on the church and it was a very positive experience, and they are in connection with each other again.  We have another appointment scheduled with them this week.

     We had a real neat opportunity to go to Spokane this week and have a meeting with the head of the churches missionary media department(or something like that).  It was an 8 hour long, spirit packed meeting.  Quite a bit of what he talked about were the refining of our teaching skills.  He talked about the importance of the study and planning sessions at the beginning and end of the day, and their power to help you in receiving revelation for investigators.  The majority of what he talked about, however, can be summed up in one sentence in Preach My Gospel.  "People are accustomed to short, powerful statements."  Much of the training was on the need to make our lessons shorter and losing all the filler material that we tend to use in our lessons.  The best part was that he showed us some ways that we can practice doing that.  We have begun to implement it in our companionship since that day and we have seen a lot of success, as we have learned that a lesson can still be as spiritually powerful, (if not more so) in 15-20 minutes as it can in an hour.

     Thats it from me this week.  I am excited for this upcoming week.  We are going to work hard and see miracles.  Love you all and hope you have a great week as well.

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