Hello hello family,
It has been a great week this week as usual. Of course, every week
is great if you choose to make it that way. We taught two lessons this
week in French. Those lessons are always fun for me and really
spiritual. We have found more french speaking members in the quad
cities who are willing to come and help us. I know what you mean when
you say you have to factor in the time that it takes to translate. My
favorite part is at the end when we ask them to pray, although we don't
know what they are saying, we feel the spirit. The gospel is true no
matter what language it is in. With Saliboko he sometimes prays in
Swahili so that his wife understands and then even our translator
doesn't know what he is saying, we just recognize Yesu Kristo Amen and
say amen. We had our first lesson with Simeon and Prince who came to
church last week. They had really good questions and they are so ready
for this gospel. We will be going back on Saturday and trying to set a
baptismal date for the 15th of December. Simeon came to church again
this week (Prince was at the hospital with his sister) and he got along
really well with Saliboko. It is good for them to have a friend at
church. I don't know what they talk about or anything, but they love
coming to church and are dedicated to come every week. And the members
are dedicated to picking them up every week which is good as well. In
total our ward had 14 investigators at church on Sunday! 9 of them were
ours and 5 were the Rock Island elders. We had a great testimony
meeting and even went over on time about 20 minutes because people were
non stop bearing there testimonies. I got up and bore mine because I
knew it would probably be the last chance I got before the transfer is
over. We get calls this Saturday to know for sure who is getting
transfered. I'm pretty certain that I will be leaving though after
spending 9 months here and just finishing training.
I am so happy to hear that every thing went well with Braden
entering the MTC. I wish I could have been there for that, but I
wouldn't trade what i'm doing right now for anything in the world. It
truly is the happiest i've been in my life. I wish you the best (if you
are reading this) on these next two years buddy. The time goes by too
fast. We had a movie night on Friday night where we showed the Joseph
Smith:Prophet of the Restoration video in our gym at the church. It's
the same one they play at the memorial building. We had a pretty good
turnout. About 25 people came to watch the movie. 6 of them were
missionaries... but we had i think 5 non members in attendance. We were
hoping to have around 50 people show up. We spread the word like crazy
and gave out flyers about 2 weeks in advance and were committing
everybody to come. We also had cookies and brownies and cupcakes
afterwards and we had a LOT of extras that we got to take home. We've
also gotten a lot of candy from various people for Halloween so my sweet
tooth is fully satisfied. I also got your package Grandma Joan and
Grandpa Pete. Thank you so much! The cookies are delicious (my
favorite). I will also save that golf ball to play when we get back...
even if it has the BYU insignia on it.
I do remember that brown paper bag game. That was a fun game. For
Halloween we were in by 6 and my companion and I played some games
together in our apartment. Then the Luthy family picked us up and we
went to their home for a little while and taught them a lesson. Kind of
a not-so-exciting day. We did attend a trunk or treat that the
Methodist church invited us to. We do service at the food pantry that
is in the church so they invited us to their dealio. We mostly went
because they were cooking hotdogs for everybody and we didn't have a
dinner appointment. It was funny because we were in our suits with our
tags on and then i just put some sunglasses on so they thought we had
dressed up as the FBI or something like that and we got a lot of
compliments on our costumes. We met the head pastor that night, I had
only ever met his wife before who is the associate pastor, and he was
very nice and glad that we came. Carrie is still doing great. It is
actually the home teachers duty here to teach the new member lessons.
However we are teaching her son Trever so we get to teach her the
lessons again through her son. We set a baptismal date with him for Jan
19. We only get to teach him every other weekend because he is with
his dad every other week. He also has ADHD which makes us have to think
of how we can make the lessons exciting and hold the attention of an 11
year old for more than 5 minutes :)
I know that this church is true with all of my heart! Love you all,
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