Hello family!!
Well, it's been a good week. We´ve been working our butts off to try and find people to teach because we weren´t left with a whole lot of investigators and we were pretty blessed this week. We were able to find a family last Friday that was really positive and another couple investigators and then Sunday came around and all of our new people didn´t come to church. Basically they all say, ya we realize that these are things that we need to do and stuff but we have to wait until there is less adversity and satan stops attacking us and God calls us. So we explain that God works through his servants, and that God literally sent us knocking at their door. Also that Satan is never going to stop attacking them, so if that´s what they´re waiting for they´ll be waiting for a long time. But I honestly think these people understand these points, they just use them as a cover because they´re too ashamed to admit that they´re just lazy and don´t want to follow God or make any sacrifices in their lives. We also found a really positive family after church on Sunday and they love the message of the restoration and are reading from the Book of Mormon and are really open minded about everything. I already see a problem with them coming to church because the dad usually works on Sundays and the mom is really shy. Please pray that they can go to church because this family is so cool! His name is Mario and her name is Berta.
I´m very happy to be with Elder Smith (despite sharing a last name). We´re both really excited and helping each other to work really hard. It´s awesome. President Brown called me in on Monday and told me that he´s been thinking and praying and that he'd have me start training Elder Smith to be the new finance secretary. Elder Smith has already helped me with a lot of the stuff I do in the two changes he already has in the office so he knows a lot about all of this already. So this means that, unless God changes his mind and has more plans for me here in the office, I should be out of here next change.
I forgot to mention a couple investigators that this area did have before I got here that we've been working with. First off we have Alexander. He´s the partner of a less active member. We've basically reactivated her since we started teaching Alexander and they've both been coming to church. They're not married but they're both completely willing to do it. We´re also helping Alexander stop smoking. He did it once before but fell after a few months but I'm confident that he'll be able to do it again, and this time permanently. Please pray that he can stop smoking.
We also have a guy named Victor. He's cool and was doing great, going to church every week, but his partner has started saying some crap. We were teaching him law of chastity the other day and she just came in and started trying to fight with us about baptism. She´s never been present in a lesson but she thinks we´re just trying to baptize him without helping him change or repent or anything, which obviously isn't what we do. So she was very misinformed and had some very interesting views on baptism because she doesn't understand repentance. She thinks, why get baptized if after we´ll just sin and be condemned? So we explained that with repentance and renewing the baptismal covenants we can avoid said condemnation and still complete with baptism which is a commandment and necessary for salvation (see John 3:5, Acts 2:38 etc). It was frustrating and hard not to get mad at a woman who's heart is so closed that she´s actually making it harder for her loved ones to repent and come unto Christ. So we´ll see what we can do with Victor but because of the partner it's not looking very good.
Yesterday we helped with 7 week training getting donuts and food and today we have consejo so we had to go give them their donuts and later we have to go get them their subway. So in-between we´ll be writing which is why this email is pretty early. Everything's going great!
Sorry about the graveyard shift Matt:( That's not much fun. Sorry about school Delaney, Peyton, and Rich:( That's not much fun either. Have fun at Vegas Mom and Dad (and Taryn and Matt and Myles too I guess). That should be fun.
Thanks to those who haven´t forgotten me and still send me those letters. It really means a lot. Thank you especially to Grandma and Louise for sending a letter every week. That's perseverance.
Love you!!!
Elder Smith
PS It rained really hard for a long time on Monday so I took a rain selfie
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