Dear Family,
This has once again been a fabulous week. We have the baptism
coming up on Saturday which will be fantastic! Carrie has asked that I
baptize her which i'm way stoked about. We have ironed out all the
details and we are hoping that we will get a good crowd there as well
with people inviting their friends. Also we are lucky to be close
enough to the other missionaries in our district that they can bring
their investigators to see the baptism as well. Something else really
cool that happened is last monday night the bishop called us and gave us
a referral for Saliboko and Tunza-John. They are married and she is
from tanzania and he is from congo and they have 3 kids and she is
expecting her 4th in november. She has a brother that is a member and
he got in contact with the bishop and said they wanted to learn more
about the church so we went and taught them the first lesson and it was
way sweet. They don't speak too much english so we have to go slow and
make sure they understand. She speaks mainly Swahili and he speaks
mainly French. We did secure books of mormon in both of those
respective languages that we were able to give them later in the week.
Plus she has a sister named Mawazo that wants to learn too. They all
came to church on Sunday and a whole one of the middle pews was full of
just their family! It was so sweet to see them all walk in. The ward
made a good effort to go and pick them up and actually had to make 2
trips because their were more bodies than they were expecting! One of
our ward members served his mission in Switzerland and still is fluent
in french so he translated for them in priesthood meeting and in sunday
school. Just a super good sunday. We are definitely seeing the
blessings come from being the most exactly obedient missionaries we can
be.
The zoo last week was fun. You can see some of the pictures i'll
attach here. We are going again today, but as a district this time and
having a picnic as well. it's nice when it's free zoo month! It was
funny when we were looking at the lions because they were all just
taking it easy and lounging and then a plane flew over and they all
hopped up and watched it fly over them and until it went out of sight
and landed at the airport nearby. I also pet a goat and a sheep and fed
some ducks and swans. It was interesting because at the bird aviary
some of the birds weren't in cages, but just in some tree things set up
down the middle of the path with a sign that just said caution: birds
may bite or something like that. I tried to snag a pic of the lion
looking like it was roaring, but it didn't work out too it's intended
purpose. It's mouth is still open though. Also they had dinosaurs at
the zoo. Don't ask me why. This week we did a role play with the bishop
and his family and had them practice with us how they can invite their
neighbors to the primary program which is also next week. It was fun...
but it can be really awkward sometimes too. It wasn't this time
though. The great thing about it though is that they went out and did
it that week and both the ones they invited agreed to come! Hopefully
they actually show up. Primary program is always one of my most
favorite sacrament meetings of the year. We also had some old families
who moved out of the ward recently come back because her sister was
getting married. It was good to see them again. Her parents (who are
serving a mission in SLC) also were able to come to attend the wedding
and then will be going back to their mission today. It was good to see
them as well since I had known them before they left.
Something that i found in my scripture study this last week is
found in alma chapter 4. This is where Alma delivers up the judgement
seat and allows being the high priest over the church become his full
time job i guess you could say. But there is a pattern that we can
apply in our own lives here... Especially being full time missionaries
and member missionaries. Step 1 is in verse 3. At the end it says
therefore they were awakened to a remembrance of their duty. When times
got hard, they didn't shun God and move away from him, but rather they
were awakened to their duty and desired to draw closer to Him. Step 2
is in verse 18. It is when Alma delivers up the judgment-seat unto
Nephihah. He gave up something that was not a bad thing to give up, but
was drawing him away from a more important calling. Plus he
consciously decided to give it up, it is not something that he lost or
that he was forced to leave. Then Step 3 is in verse 19. Near the end
it says seeing no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing
down in pure testimony against them. That is our duty, to bear pure
testimony. I know that as we remember our duty and give up the things
keeping us from doing it to the best that we can and bear pure testimony
to the people we come in contact with that we will be able to reclaim
and rescue them.
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