September 15, 2015
Fall is in the air! I walked out yesterday to knock doors and I was just smacked with Deja Vu. I kept telling Elder Flake "It feels like my birthday. Like all my childhood birthday picnics and stuff." And then it turned into "It feels like Halloween." The weather has been beautiful these last couple days and I just have this familiar feeling right now. Like...I'm home or something. I guess this time of year has always kind of been my favorite so it's only natural.
We had a lot of success this week. I talked about some of our investigators last week. Now I'm gonna fill you in on their progression.
N has skyrocketed! She had some doubts about some things last week, but I was able to clear those up in Gospel Principles on Sunday, so I knew she was progressing. She really loves all the doctrine of the Plan of Salvation. She has a lot of concerns about death, so the restored truths of the restoration really help her to understand where her loved-ones are and what's going to happen to them. We went to teach her on Thursday night and she had a lot of questions about the Restoration through Joseph Smith, so before she asked any more, I popped in the Joseph Smith movie and we just went. After the movie, she didn't have any more questions and I could tell that she felt the Spirit. After explaining that she will get baptized, but wasn't ready, I asked her what was holding her back. She didn't really say anything, so then the conversation magically moved to the fact that her son is being deployed in January, so if she wants him to baptized her, she needs to get baptized soon. So we set a date for the 17th of October....and it's super solid! She will be baptized on that day. No doubt in my mind (uncle Rico voice). Now we just have to teach her the commandments and get the members involved and she's good to go. I'm excited!
We were unable to meet with our golden investigator, L this week, but we dropped by and gave him a Plan of Salvation to read. Apparently he hasn't been feeling well, so hopefully next weekend is promising.
R is still well....R. He's got so many weird ideas in his head and he's just a little hard-headed. He didn't come to church for some reason, but he says that he loves meeting with us and he asked a super good question on Thursday. He asked "If we all lived with God before this life, then why did God even put Adam here on the Earth?" That means he's starting to process things a little bit! This is the key to destroying his false beliefs about the Fall. I'm hoping to make a lot of progress with him this week, so we'll see what happens. He's just sooo hard-headed it's not even funny.
So there's a few of our success stories this week. Our diligence continues to pay off and the Lord is continuing to bless us with miracles. We do the work, he supplies the sheaves. It's that simple.
The Lord has been trying my patience lately. I just want every lesson to go perfectly so I can baptize, but it just hasn't been going that way. I start teaching and people just start talking about absolutely nothing. It's incredibly frustrating. My gospel principles class was taken over by talkers yesterday and a lady who asked "why is Joseph Smith's name not in the Bible?" Does she even know what she just asked? Hmmmm maybe because the Bible was written two-thousand years ago? People just don't like to think logically sometimes. That's something that I love about the Gospel. In its fullness, it makes perfect sense. There are no holes in any of the doctrine, unlike that of other false churches. Sometimes I just want to force my understanding of things down people's throats, but we all know that it doesn't work that way. Christ never did it that way. He asks us to be patient and teach the people exactly what they need to hear to progress in the Gospel. It's hard sometimes, but that's really what makes a convert. Unless people understand the personal relevance of the gospel to THEM, it doesn't matter what we teach them. That's my testimony of the matter.
Well. enough of the rambling. It's been a good week and I hope to continue to have success. Please pray that we can stay diligent and that we can figure this difficult week out. We have to turn our car in for repairs for five days this week, so it's gonna be very hard to get to some of our investigators. Please pray that the members can step up and that the Lord will provide for our needs.
Have a good one!
-Elder Landon Carroll
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