Miracles and Baptisms

The week here has been really good! We are seeing a lot of miracles and success. This Saturday, a man that we are teaching is going to be baptized. His name is Eric. We had a really good week this week with a lot of our investigators coming to church! We are seeing that the Lord is preparing people in this area. In Alma 13:24 it says, 

"For behold, angels are declaring it unto many at this time in our land; and this is for the purpose of preparing the hearts of the children of men to receive his word at the time of his coming in his glory." 

We are seeing that that is very true in our area. We had a great experience with the Elders in Cascade Crest sending us an awesome referral! They were walking quickly because they were running late to an appointment. All of the sudden, they heard someone whistle at them. They turned around and it was a lady in her 30's. She started talking to them and discussing how she wants to start attending church with her husband because all of her children have been going to different churches, but they haven't found the one that works for them yet. The Elders were able to have a great discussion with her on the street about the Plan of Salvation and now she wants to meet with us! It is really amazing to see how the Lord is preparing the hearts of the people in this area. 

Lots of Good Things Happening

The week here was good. It’s been busy and lots of things happening. We have been teaching a lot of people, which is good. We have three guys that we are teaching that are all doing good on their own right. Two of them are close to baptism. One of them is getting closer. He has been to church four weeks in a row and seems to like it. Josh told us this past week told us that he wants to be baptized, so that will probably happen within the next couple of weeks. 

We had a cool experience this week. We were in an apartment complex and saw a couple that we have talked with a bunch. One of them was on the phone and she was asking about an HDMI cable and how much it costs. We had an HDMI cable in our bag, so we pulled it out and gave it to them. This was a very big miracle in their lives. They saw it as a testimony that Heavenly Father is aware of them. We were able to start talking more and started talking about baptism. He has wanted to be baptized for a while apparently, but has to change because of the commandments. But they both accepted the invitation to prepare to be baptized on July 21st! So that was really cool. We are excited for them. 

Cool Experiences

The week with Elder Nonu has been good. It’s definitely a learning experience for both of us. He is doing well though and he is starting to pick up the language better. It’s just different for him, not going to the MTC. We saw some cool experiences this week. We went to Costco for lunch on Thursday and while we were there, a guy working pest control came up to us and bought us lunch. He served a mission in independence, Missouri. He is only in Bend for the week. Well, a couple of days later, we were really late for lunch and decided to go to Subway (we really haven’t been eating out that much lately because we have been eating healthier.. ) but we got there and got into line and guess who was in front of us? The same guy! He bought us lunch again. It was really nice of him. 

We had a cool experience yesterday. We went in the morning to go wake up one of our investigators. When we got there, there were a couple of people outside. The natural man didn’t want to talk to them because we were already late to wake Eric up and we had church soon, etc. But we decided to do it anyways. It turns out that they were really cool! They had even talked to the Sisters the other day. The one guy asked pretty much why God doesn’t send anyone today because it’s a crazy world. So we told him how Heavenly Father calls a prophet and that there is one on the earth today and they liked that! 

Elder Nonu

My new companion is Elder Nonu. He is from Tonga. He has lived in Seattle for a year, but is not very familiar with America or the English language. We are working on his english and trying to help him to feel comfortable teaching the lessons. He has had a long journey in trying to come out on a mission, because of visa issues in the past. He is actually a few months older than me. And he came straight from home, not going to the MTC. But he is a really good man and very humble. I am excited to work with him until I go home. 

The week overall was pretty good. During the two days that I waited for Elder Nonu, I was with Elder McElreath and Schultz. It was really good. We talked with a lot of people and had a lot of really good lessons. We watched the Day's of Harmony video with one of our investigators, and then afterwards the Spirit really impressed us to talk about baptism. So we talked to him about it and he is going to pray about a date to be baptized. It was really good. We had a really good scripture study class this past week. One of our investigators, Eric, came to the class and after the class we talked about coming to church on Sunday. He works really late into the night, but he told us that we could come wake him up. So we went over in the morning and woke him up and he came to church for the first time! We were really excited about that. At church, Sister McCall bore her testimony, which was really cool to see! She has missed the past couple of weeks and bore her testimony of how she has felt the absence in her heart because of not being there, so that was good.