Monday, December 28, 2009

28 Dec 2009

     So yeah, special case this week because all of the colleges and libraries are closed we get to write emails from members houses. We ended up coming to Aunt Marsha's house again. :-) Funny, I saw them 3-4 days ago! Don't be jealous Mom! Aunt Marsha says HI! So I don't have as much time so I'll share some of what's going on with my investigators:

     I'm adjusting more and more to how things work here in the mission field, and I'm giving my whole heart and soul into the work. This week has been slightly discouraging because everyone is so concentrated on Christmas, parties and other family festivities that most of our appointments dropped us again this week. The investigators we've been able to teach are Margrito and Cristina who live with the Hernandez family, Able and Antonio (our 2 new investigators), and Roberto. We invited Margarito and Cristina to be baptized, but Margarito has his doubts about needing to be baptized again, and Cristina is worried about being baptized and falling down again, but she still has the desire to be baptized. We are going to focus on teaching Margarito about the priesthood and the restoration and about how even though he was baptized before he has a need to be baptized again by the priesthood of God with boldness and love. We are also going to focus teaching the third lesson to Cristina about the Sacrament and it's purpose about washing us clean and renewing our covenants with God again. We will set a baptismal date with them when we help them overcome their current doubts and fears.

     Teaching Able was interesting, we taught him the 2nd half of the first lesson, because we had to teach him outside of his apartment, because the "boss" of the house doesn't want us to come in.  Able has attended the ward Christmas party and has met some of the members and has a friend that came with him who we are trying to get a hold of so that we can teach him too. We are also going to try to teach Able at the chapel and have a member pick him up and be there at the lesson with us.

     Antonio was a contact that we visited a week and a half ago when we were tracting on Sunset Dr.  Everyone was eating, him included, and he didn't seem interested at the time, but we felt prompted to see him again. We knocked on his door and he let us in and we had one of our best 1st lessons that we've ever taught! It was amazing, and I'm excited to see how he progresses, and if we can teach his wife and his son.

     We tried to contact many of our other investigators from last week, but like I said before they were never home when we passed by. Their phones never seemed to work either. After this New Year's week passes things should work back to being more and more normal.

     Oh! I almost forgot about Roberto. We've been trying to talk to Roberto for this entire week, but he got a new job and hasn't been around his house very much. So last night we contacted one of our other investigator families the Sandovals and felt like we should go see Roberto. He was there and we talked to him about 3 Nephi 11, and about the Book of Mormon and the Restoration in more detail than our quick lesson that we had with him the week before. We invited him to come to church and to finish the chapter of 3 Nephi 11. He seems to have a little bit of trouble reading, but I'm excited for him too!

     My studies have been all over the place of late, but I've been learning from Preach My Gospel from page 100 (en espanol) which talks about trusting the spirit. It's great to learn about trusting the spirit and looking at how the spirit has helped Elder Knowles and I to know where we need to go, what we need to do, and what we need to say.

     An example of saying something that needs to be said just came to me. On last Saturday we taught Victor Hernandez who was telling us that he felt bad about telling us that he would come to church and then end up not going, and that he was going to stop trying to come. Elder Knowles talked to him about why coming to church was important and bore testimony that it was something that we needed to do, and I talked about the Sacrament and how we renew our covenants with God, and how even if we miss the other meetings that the sacrament is the most important part of keeping the Sabbath day holy, and worshiping our Father in Heaven, and Jesus Christ. He told us that he would do his best to be there this week, and that he felt the spirit of our message touch him. He's a great man. He just needs to make it to church and he'll see more blessings in his life.

     I'm really excited to see this work progress! This the Lord's church, his only church on the Earth with all of the truths from Adam through Christ's ministry, and those truths revealed to our prophets today! I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God! I know that Thomas S. Monson is our prophet today, and that we can know all of the truths of the Gospel through prayer and the Holy Ghost.

     Keep up the good work!

Elder Richard Mackelprang

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note that this is a moderated blog - Elder Mackelprang neither reads or (directly) writes to this blog. This is done by his father.