Email from Elder Stacey 1/30/2012

Well I heard an interesting statement made by someone, and I don't remember who said it, but it was this, "For every righteous action made, there is an equal and opposite reaction from the adversary."  I think I can find some real truth in that this week for the reason that for all of the great lessons we had with our investigators and their wanting to learn more, including attend church,  not one of them(for various reason) ended up coming to church on Sunday.  Satan doesn't want anyone to come to the knowledge of the gospel and the moment we leave someones house, he will do anything possible to make sure that those people stumble.  I have to admit that I had gotten a little frustrated-and for a small moment, very frustrated- to come to church and find that nobody came.  I'm sure that part of it is that Satan will tell people that church, or prayer, or any good thing is not necessary to have a relationship with Christ, and therefore, why do it.  I just hope that when we do see them again, we can help them understand the blessings that come from going to church.  On a good topic however, Leslie has set a date for herself to be baptized and one in which she will have quit smoking for two weeks.  She has been almost seventy two hours without a cigarrette and so I have faith that she will be able to quit and make her date of February 11th.  She has a lot of support from the ward, and I can see a difference in her attitude.  She is a lot happier and gets very excited to see and do things with the ward.  We gave a guy named David and his girlfriend Angie a church tour.  David seemed to learn quite a bit from the tour and said himself that he was interested in learning what WE believe and not what other people say we believe.  We gave him a Book of Mormon and he really wants to read it.  I have high hopes for him, and we are going to see him later this week.  We went down to Ford and Wellpinit on Saturday, which is the southern most part of our area, and had some things happen there.  We picked out a name of a former investigator down there to see if she was interested in meeting with us again.  As we went to her house, she was outside and we were able to talk with her.  We found out that she had actually moved to Spokane in November, and that she was just at this place for the day to see her kids.  She wants to go back to church, and meet with missionaries again.  It was incredibly fortunate that we were able to see her.  We only have the miles to go down south in our area once in a transfer without member help(it's about a 160 mile round trip to spend the day there) and the fact that the one day we went down was the one day that she was there was not a coincidence.  We gave her information to some Spokane Elders and we pray for the best with her.  We also got the car stuck at the bottom of a hill.  We were driving to find a less active member and drove down a hill only to find that it was a ravine and that we had to drive back up another hill.  After a few attempts at driving up the ice hill, we decided to turn around and try the other way, only to find out that road was only slightly less elevated and icy.  Needless to say we go out of the ravine, but only after about 30 min of trying.  Also needless to say, I don't like ice.  Thats about it from me this week.  I love to hear from everyone and thank you for all your support.  Have a great week