Hellooo
everyone!! Reporting week 5 here in Atlanta! I hope you all had a great week
and that you’re off to a good start today!
This week started off with a little
apartment fix-up. I literally called the entire maintenance staff in our
apartment to come to our place and fix everything because we had so many things
that weren't working. So we had five guys chillin’ with their shirts off fixing
our disposal, putting in new lights, etc. I wonder what they thought of all the
pictures of Jesus everywhere and our charts of investigators on the wall. They
probably think missionaries are part of a secret service who plan fatalities
against these innocent people one day at a time. Oopsies.
On Friday, we had an awesome
experience with one of our investigators named Payton. Payton is a 15 year-old
boy who wants to get baptized and is more than ready. His parents live in Alabama
and don't really want him to get baptized. He lives with his less-active
grandparents, who are now active because of Payton's desire to go to church.
Missionaries have been teaching him for a while, and I've personally had about
8 lessons with him. Every time we teach, we talk to him about getting baptized,
but his grandparents intervene and tell us that he needs to talk to his dad
first, and that he's not ready. The bishop actually told us to not worry about
Payton anymore because we've done all we can, and that he would take it into
his own hands.
Anyway, on
Friday we felt like we should go visit him and we didn't really know why. We
sat down with him and had a great lesson, and at the end I felt like I should
extend a baptism date to him instead of asking more questions. I told him we
wanted to baptize him on the 26th of this month. He sat there for a second then
said, "Ya! I would really like that!" He went on to explain that he
is visiting his dad this week for his birthday and he is going to tell him he
is getting baptized. Also, to our surprise, when his grandparents saw how
excited their grandson was about getting baptized this month, they agreed to
let it happen. It was truly a miracle
that everything went so swiftly that night, after it had been so tough for
months and months. At the end of the lesson, Payton offered to pray, and he
prayed about how he hopes his dad will allow him to get baptized. It was
probably the sweetest thing in the world to hear this 15 year-old kid pray for
his dad because he wants to get baptized so badly! I know that once his dad
hears how bad he wants it, there is no way he'll be able to say no!
This weekend we got the unique
opportunity to listen to our prophet and apostles speak. I hope you all enjoyed
it as much as I did!! General Conference is like the Lord's tender mercy for
missionaries. 10 hours of sitting on your butt watching TV is so nice! I loved
all the talks that were given. As a missionary, they all seem to be speaking
right to you. I'm sure it's been repeated over and over again, but I loved
President Uchtdorf's quote, "doubt your doubts before you doubt your
faith." I love that!! It's something everyone can remember.
This week we also had a meeting with
our mission president for all the new missionaries. In his lesson, he taught us
about how us missionaries have direct influences on our family and friends back
home even when we aren't communicating with them. He said that the more
diligent we are, then the more blessings our family will receive back home.
This has become my motivation as a missionary! To work as hard as I can so that
each of you can feel the blessings that I receive for being a missionary every
day!
Thanks to all the love you show me!
It carries me every day and keeps me going! If I couldn't get back to you today
then I will as soon as I can.
Love you all!
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