Wow. That must be hard for everyone. . . . I'm praying for their family, and I hope everything goes well. I don't really know what to say, other than please keep me updated, as usual. I'm really greatful for God's plan for His families. I've talked to some really stubborn people out here, and I'll say something like "our message is that families can be together forever" and some respond with a quick "no they can't." What a sad view of eternity that must be. Elder Holland once said Heaven would not be Heaven without my family. Luckily God understands that, and has a plan to make heaven a real heaven.
Glad your doing good, Joe. From all three emails I've gotten from you, you're a'ight. :-) Ask Kassie, that's a good thing.
Hey family!
Again a lot has happened out there. Again, I'm praying for everyone.
This last week has been a great blessing for our area. Our mission president asked us to focus on teaching lessons to investigators with a member present this week. Wow is that hard to do. There are three things that make that difficult 1) we have to have appointments set up with everyone in advance 2) we have to find someone to come with us 3) the investigator has to actually show up for the appointment.
Usually we do okay with that, but the past couple of weeks we've been struggling. In fact, just teaching investigators has been really hard. I spent a lot of time praying for help in meeting that goal. By some miracle, we managed to get a lot of appointments set up. Yay! And we managed to find a lot a members who were available for lessons! Yay! And, best of all, almost all of our lessons went through. What an amazing week it's been. I can't remember the last time I taught so many lessons in a week. It really was amazing.
And, on top of that, we found some great new people to teach. We didn't find any of them ourselves, so they are obviously a blessing and a miracle.
One is the father of Josh, a 13 year old that we have been teaching for a few weeks. Jason, his father, noticed the change in his son and finally contacted us and ask us to come over and meet with him. He came to church on Sunday and really loved it.
Another is a really nice family where his dad is a member but doesn't come to church, the wife is not a member and wasn't very interested in the church, and the kids really love church and want to be baptized. The parents finally gave in and let us come over and talk with the kids to answer some of their questions. Well, the kids turned out to be kind of quiet. But the mom started asking a lot of great questions. They are a really great family.
We've also been getting a TON of referrals from the Easter Pageant. We have a lot to contact, so we'll have to get on that. :-) Our area is really being blessed all of a sudden. Work seems to come and go in waves-- it would be nice if it just kept rapidly going up, and stopped dropping every once in a while. But then I probably wouldn't appreciate these times a wonderful chaos.
Do you remember Shawn and Michelle? Shawn needed to quit smoking to prepare for his baptism on the 1st of May. He had to quit smoking be Saturday. Well, he had been trying and trying, and Saturday came and he still hadn't quit, and then he hurt his knee, and some other medical problems (nothing major) have popped up. Some would say that it's a terrible thing, but I feel that it's a blessing in disguise. He hasn't been able to smoke since his quit smoking day, even if he wanted to. Go figure. Heavenly Father is brilliant. And Shawn is doing good.
Anyway, that's about is for this week.
Lots of love from Oh-No (AZ), and I pray for you all as well.
Jason
and here is a family picture we sent to Jason....
Thank you for sending that picture. That one really means a lot to me. Thanks.
