It's been a good week. We had interviews with President Clark this week which is always nice. We also found a few new people and they are really solid. Plus I got to talk to my family twice last week because of Easter.
Usually interviews are the last week of the transfer, but they were in week 3 this time. President Clark is a genius and he always has great insights. He gave me a lot of advice and things to try to help out investigators. This mission is really lucky to have him, he knows what he is doing.
We found a new person to teach last night named Alycia. Her husband is a member, but she isn't. They were all sick, so we went to give them priesthood blessings, and it turns out that she has actually been wanting to join the church. Crazy. So we have them all blessings and then set up a time to come teach the first lesson this week. She is so ready for the gospel. #miracle
We also started teaching a lady named Kathy who has been taught before. She is basically a member, but can't be baptized because of some Word of Wisdom issues. She is working hard to overcome them, but it will take a lot of time and effort.
There is another guy we teach named Alan who is really unique. He reads the Book of Mormon with us nightly for a half hour and loves it and knows it is true, he comes to church every week, and he knows all the members and is good friends with them. He won't get baptized until he reads the Quran and the Bible though. He wants to make sure this is the true church before joining. We will start teaching him about faith and acting in faith, because he has the faith but won't act on it.
Basically we have a lot of people who are planning on getting baptized (Alycia, Kathy, Alan, Jen, Abbie, Jon, and Marie), but they each have their own challenges and obstacles in the way. We are working hard to break those obstacles down though. Hopefully I will be able to see all these people overcome their obstacles.
I got to talk to my family yesterday because it was Easter. It was great because they were at a family party, so I got to see a lot of my extended family who I haven't seen in 7 months. The new guidelines about calling home are a huge blessing for me and I'm very grateful that I get to see my family more often now.
I ate 50 nuggets in 45 minutes. Yes, it was terrible and yes, I'm crazy. Do not try at home.
THIS TRANSFER'S ALMOST OVER!
Time flies out here on the mission, but it also just drags on at the same time. I don't know how to explain it. But this is the last week of the transfer already, which means I've been in Rockledge for more than a month. That's crazy to me. I love Rockledge, and I really hope I'll be able to stay another transfer here. I'll find out on Saturday.
Anyway, this week was a good week. We visited lots of people this week and had some good lessons. The highlight of the week was having a 3.5 hour lesson with one of the Port St. John Elder's investigators. It was very interesting. We also had a very long discussion with a few of our own investigators. We taught a lot of doctrine this week.
So on Friday we were talking to our district leader about one of their investigators who has studied with the Jehovah's Witnesses for ten years, and she doesn't believe in their church so she decided to meet with us instead. They didn't know how to help her with a few doctrinal issues that the Jehovah's Witnesses has ingrained in her. Let's just say they emphasize the fact that Jehovah is Heavenly Father, not Jesus. (Jehovah actually is Jesus FYI) We said we could help, because we knew how assist with fixing the problem doctrines. So on Saturday we drove over there and had a lesson with the four of us. It went on for 3.5 hours of using Bible verses to show where we get our doctrine of different things from, bearing testimony, and lots of discussion. In the end she actually progressed quite a bit, and we gave her a few simple things to study and pray about that could help her even more. I really enjoy lessons like that, so Saturday was a good day.
We also have a guy we teach named John. He is a super funny guy and we are constantly joking with him. He has a Ring doorbell that he loves watching the videos of people coming to his door on. So we always do something funny in front of it. A few weeks ago Elder Ward did something pretty funny in front of it, (he crashed his bike while trying to do something funny), and we got the video of it this week when we visited John. I put that in the Google drive for y'alls to see.
Anyway, John is agnostic and doesn't really believe in anything because he has too many unanswerable questions he says. We had a long lesson where we answered probably 15 questions he had about different things. We told him if anyone had answers, it was us. So he put us to the test. It was mostly just because he was entertained by trying to stump us, not really because he wanted to learn. Either way though, he learned a lot of doctrine this week.
As far as other investigators go, Jon, Jen and Abbie are now more free to meet and have lessons because they got new jobs with better work schedules. Yay! They want to be baptized, but have some issues to clear up first. Hopefully we will be able to help them more now.
If nothing else, this week helped my testimony a lot. I know the Church is true because logically our doctrines make sense and are backed up by scripture, but more importantly because of the spirit I feel as I live it and because of the happiness it brings me.
To finish this email off, here's a few verses I read this week that I enjoyed.
Helaman 5:40 And it came to pass that the Lamanites said unto him: What shall we do, that this cloud of darkness may be removed from overshadowing us?
41 And Aminadab said unto them: You must repent, and cry unto the voice, even until ye shall have faith in Christ, who was taught unto you by Alma, and Amulek, and Zeezrom; and when ye shall do this, the cloud of darkness shall be removed from overshadowing you.
42 And it came to pass that they all did begin to cry unto the voice of him who had shaken the earth; yea, they did cry even until the cloud of darkness was dispersed
44 [And] they were filled with that joy which is unspeakable and full of glory.
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