July 25, 2016

Hey Family!

This week was a good week. We were able to meet with G-- quite a few
times with helping him to progress towards baptism and he is getting
really close. It was frustrating because we had a ride for him to come
to church but we had miscommunication and the ride never showed up so
G-- wasn't able to come.  He was pretty disappointed but he understood
and he's doing fine-- he's working on a few things but we're working with
him, especially with the word of wisdom, but he's doing great!

So I talked about E-- last week a little bit, and the hold up
with her baptism was because of her husband. He's not really a
fan of the church and now she will not be baptized at least for a
little while more until she gets the ok from her husband or her
husband's heart gets softened, but we are praying for that so hopefully
it will come soon. We didn't meet with L-- this week, she's been
very busy with work and preparing to go out to Utah and she will be
leaving this week and we are really excited for her, we didn't teach her
all of the new member lessons--we left a few for the missionaries back
in Utah so that she can get familiar with the people of the church
there and have the missionaries help her a lot, so we know that she
will be fellowshipped.

One thing this week that Elder Washburn and I thought was cool was we
made it a big goal to get 20 lessons this week from investigators, and
members and we were able to reach that and we had some really
spiritual lessons.  The members in the Wolfboro branch are really
strong and they have a lot of really cool viewpoints on the gospel, as
well as our investigators, so it's been a lot of fun with teaching this
week and we have made a goal to teach even more this next week and we
hope that that can happen so that we can continue to learn as well.

We picked up 3 new investigators this week, one named J-- and he
came to church this week, D-- she was a referral from a member,
which is actually kind of funny because the member that referred her
to us graduated from lone Peak is well. And Elder Washburn and I were
walking around Main Street the other day and we ran into a guy that
owns a bookstore that is pretty much just a hole in the wall, and we
went in and taught him a lesson. We are getting him a Book of
Mormon and he has had a lot of exposure to the church and it's really
been an uplifting experience for him so we are excited to start
teaching him as well.

One thing that has been on my mind a lot lately that is something we
as missionaries get a lot. I'm not sure how it is in other missions
but the apostasy is something that is very questioned. So I've been
studying it a lot lately. It has strengthened my testimony to
understand the basics, like studying it from preach my gospel, but
going a little more in depth has been really interesting to me and has
really strengthened my testimony as well. It definitely shows the
corruption of man and the step by step progress that the Lord worked
to prepare the restored gospel to come to the earth. I want to
challenge you all to study the apostasy! You don't have any excuse not
to, because almost all of you have an iPad or iPhone or some sort of
tablet so you can pull up preach my gospel, and chapter 40 of Jesus
the Christ. It's really important to know, especially if you run into
Catholics who have questions about the church! I know that it's kind
of an interesting commitment to study a time period like the apostasy
but it will strengthen your testimony I promise. And it's a blessing
that we have the restored gospel in our lifetime for sure, and to be
able to piece the puzzle together a little bit of how and why it
happened.  It's really interesting!

Love you, fam!  Have a good week!