Baptismal "Amazing Grace"

Dear Family,

     We had an amazing week! After a 3-4 weeks that were really slow in our zone, this last week key indicators skyrocketed zone wide! We were really pleased with how hard our Elders and Sisters worked this week, a lot got done. We had the best week we've had in awhile too. It was really good. We only had 3 investigators at Sacrament Meeting, which is low for Elder Hirshfeld and I, but other then that things went great. We found a lot of great people this week and had alot of success. We actually set 2 baptismal dates this week, though we weren't together for either one. Wednesday we were on exchanges with the Assistants, so I was with Elder Hancock and Elder Hirshfeld was with Elder Conrad. While Elder Hancock was interviewing Gloria for her baptism the other 2 Elders went and taught Melanie Evans. She's an awesome lady, but she's been having alot of trouble shaking her pentecostal roots. We've been working hard with her for several months, and Wednesday Elder Hirshfeld and Conrad set a baptismal date with her! She'll be baptized May 15. Then on Sunday we had a couple of the young men come out with us after church, and we split off again. Elder Hirshfeld went out with Shawn Botti, and 18 year old priest (he's getting the Melchizedek Priesthood in a couple weeks) who actually just joined the church about a year ago. They had a great day. I went out with Brandon Theolee, who is leaving on his mission to Chicago on May 5, and another Priest from the ward, John Ervin. We had an amazing lesson with Chris Cruze, who we tracted into about a month ago. He is still really struggling with his testimony of the Book of Mormon (even though he's read quite a bit and loves everything he's read) and of the necessity of the Restoration. He's interesting because he has no problem with the Joseph Smith story, he says if got spoke to people back then why not now? He firmly believes in the Gift of Prophecy. What he's struggling with is why that matters for him and why that makes us the only true church. Really what he's not understanding is the Great Apostasy. So we had a really powerful lesson on the Great Apostasy. We used tons of scriptures (he knows his Bible really well, which surprisingly is rare out here) and the Spirit was just super super strong the whole time. I've had tons of amazing spiritual experiences on my mission, but I'm not sure if I've ever felt it that strong for that sustained amount of time before. The whole hour we were in there teaching it was just burning really strong and guiding everything we said. We were really bold and told him "you've said yourself that a 14 year old boy could not have just made up this book on his own. Well based on that that means there are two options: either he was inspired by God or it was inspired by the Devil." We then bore testimony of how it is another testament of Jesus Christ and of the profound impact it's had on each of our lives, and how we know that it's true and because of that we know that Joseph Smith is the Prophet of the Restoration which the Bible itself clearly testifies that must take place. By the end of it he listed several other convincing evidences that he's seen and kind of bore testimony, then he was like, "I'm going to tell you right now - I firmly believe it's true." So we set a baptismal date for May 22! It was such an amazing experience. Then of course one of the greatest highlights this week - Gloria Miller got baptized Saturday!

April 10, 2010 Elder Hirshfeld, Gloria Miller, Elder Goodale

It was one of the most amazing baptisms ever. She's so sweet. As we were setting up the program we asked her what hymns she wanted. She asked for her favorite, Amazing Grace, but we told her we couldn't do that one because it's not in the hymnbook. But that night we called Brother Bernotski and asked him if he could find some music for it that we could do as a special musical number to surprise her. Well he couldn't find any sheet music with the short notice we gave him, so without any music in front of him he just arranged his own version Saturday Morning. Sister Housel and Sister Norris sang it at the baptism, and it was probably the most beautiful arrangement of Amazing Grace that I've ever heard! It was SOOO powerful! You should've seen Gloria too, she just started bawling the second they started singing. It was really great. I hope you all have a great week! I love you!

Love,
Elder Goodale