- Justin ate pizza!!!
- They found 12 new investigators in a small town where they've knocked on every door at least twice.
- On a first lesson, a family they are teaching accepted a baptismal challenge.
- Did I mention that Justin at pizza??? (though the frog legs experience sounds cool, too)
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Hey family! How's it going? It sounds like summer is unwinding pretty nicely there. I hope all of Brianna's tests went well. I'm sure you'll let me know the results as soon as you get them. Thank you so much for the package! Thanks for taking care of all those things for me. I would also love to have, at some point, (it's not urgent) the pictures that I sent home of my first two transfers. Remember after my card got destroyed I printed off several of Elder Johnson's pictures and mailed those to you. I would love to have all of those in an album as well. Also, are you sure those were all the pictures from my transfer with Elder Simakov? I don't think I got all of them. There was another card that you didn't include. Thank you for sending the rest of the pictures though, as well as the other things I asked for.
Things here are going great! We had 12 new investigators this week! We also taught 38 lessons. So we got really close to our goal of 40, but didn't quite make it. We had 3 appointments on Sunday fall through, (basically from the end of church all the way up until dinner fell apart) otherwise we would've taught 40 lessons this week. But other than Sunday, this week went really, really well. On Friday night we went and taught a potential investigator named Jamie West. We found her tracting our first full day here in Ava, but because of some health things haven't been able to teach her at all over the last 6 weeks. But Friday night we finally got in and taught her, and had the most amazing lesson! The Spirit was SO strong. She's a single mom with two daughters: Tiffany, who's 15, and Shelly, who's 9. The daughters were both there for the lesson as well, and were really involved, especially Tiffany. It was a very powerful lesson. They all understood everything and Tiffany told us that it "makes so much more sense than anything else I've ever heard in any other church." Jamie felt the same way. Jamie had actually told us that she's had this hole in her heart that she hasn't been able to fill, and nothing seems to be able to fill it. Well towards the end of the lesson we asked her to read Moroni 10:4-5 and by the time she finished verse 4, she knew the Book of Mormon was true and that everything else we were telling her is true. She said that she knows that this is exactly what she's been needing to fill that hole. Then they agreed to be baptized (Editor's Note: That link, if you click it, describes baptism, or this one talks about the covenants one makes when baptized.) on September 12! The whole family! It was such an incredible lesson, I can't wait to go back tonight. Brother Bruce was with us too, and he bore really powerful testimony to her. Brother Bruce is awesome. He's a little Italian guy from Philadelphia (everybody calls him Luigi) and he's a convert to the church. He's a really cool guy. He actually fed us dinner that night as well, and cooked us some real pizza, Italian style. Actually he made us the first pizza that was ever made, Pizza Margarita. (apparently named after the Queen of Naples, who it was cooked for) It was delicious. So that was the highlight of the week. (the lesson with Jamie, not the pizza. Though that was good too) Also on Thursday afternoon, right as we were finishing up weekly planning, Bishop Kjar poked his head in the door (remember we live with the Bishop) and asked us to speak in church on Sunday. As in 3 days from then. So of course we agreed, then he gave us our topic: Philippians. That's all he gave us. Then when we got to church we found out it was just 2 really young youth speakers, a rest hymn, then Elder Davis then me. It was my first time being the last speaker of the meeting... It went well, though. Elder Davis decided to focus his talk on Philippians 4:13, which says that we can do all things through Christ. As I read through it, the scripture that really stuck out to me was Philippians 2:15, about how in this "crooked and perverse nation" we must "shine as lights in the world." So my talk was about the importance of being an example and the power of that example, mainly focusing on that scripture along with Matthew 5:14-16 (which goes perfectly with that verse) and 1 Timothy 4:12. That was the first half of my talk...actually probably more like two-thirds. The rest of my talk was on sacrifice, which also stuck out to me (actually it kind of sticks out in all of Paul's epistles...) Those two subjects go really well together though. The talk went really well, possibly the best talk I've ever given. Actually I'm pretty certain it was. Not that that had anything to do with me, the talk basically wrote itself. I could definitely feel the Spirit guiding the entire thing. I don't think anything else exciting happened this week... Oh I had frog legs for the first time on Wednesday. Good stuff. Well that's it for this week. Keep praying for us, and everybody be safe! Have fun with school starting! Love you!
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