(Letter April 23)
It's been a pretty busy week here, that included some more tender mercies of the Lord. It turns out, I'm staying in Trenton to finish up Elder Jellen's training. Who knows, I could be here for the rest of my mission, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. So here's the quick update for the week.
Sunday was just a wonderful day full of tender mercies and blessings from the Lord. It's amazing how you can work so hard to try to get things rolling and nothing seems to be happening, and then one day without any effort of your own, the Lord just shows forth his great power and blesses you. I have truly seen that the blessings come after the trial of your faith. Yesterday we were sitting in gospel principles not thinking that any of our investigators were gonna make it to church, when all of a sudden the door opens and in walks Carlos and Bridget. I remember seeing them, and just saying to myself... "No Way". I wasn't really expecting them because Elder Jellen had talked to Carlos on the phone that morning, and Carlos said he probably wouldn't be able to make it because his daughter or sister or something invited him to Catholic church. When I talked to him after the GP class, he said that they were on their way to church and had to make the decision if they were going to Catholic church or our church, and he said that God led them to our church that day! It was amazing.
Then during sacrament meeting, Hermano Modernel (our ward-mission leader) did the confirmation for Henry. The end of the transfer was capped off with an amazing lesson with our new investigator Madelyn. She was a former and had been super busy, so she got dropped, but she texted us a few weeks ago, asking about general conference because she wanted to come. Unfortunately she had missed it, but she said that we would be able to come and see her the 22nd (Yesterday). We went over there and met her for the first time. She's 23, from the Dominican Republic, married, and has 1 child. We got a little bit of her background, and she said that she had been going to church for about a year straight when she was in the DR. She has read a bunch of the Book of Mormon. She said she reads the Gospel Principles book every day before work, and said that she can just feel that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet when she hears him speak. She stated that she wanted to be baptized so she could have the Holy Ghost, and hopes that she can get baptized, and then her husband will follow so that they can get sealed in the temple. As you can imagine, I was pretty blown away by this first visit. She's truly a Golden Investigator. And what's better is that she has been super busy with 2 jobs lately, but she just got a supervisor position and gets to start making her own schedule, so getting her to church shouldn't be too big of a problem either! That was such an amazing blessing from the Lord, and we are excited to start working with her more.
Our Wednesday are service days. This is Paul whom we do service with once a week.
We were also able to find a new investigator this week named Jose, who's a super nice guy. He seems really interested in learning about God, and said that he wants to make changes in his life. We also set a baptismal date with our Investigator Manuel which we are pretty excited about. So I would say things are definitely picking up in the Area, which makes me excited to be able to stay here for at least one more.
The training from the mission department was also a really great blessing. They came and talked to us about how our purpose correlates with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They talked a little bit about how Preach My Gospel came to be, and then they showed us a presentation of the future of Mormon.org, and it's ads that are going to be all over Hulu, Youtube, and Facebook. It's pretty cool. Hulu is a website where you go to watch TV shows, and there are ads in there that you have to watch, you can't skip over them, and the church is going to buy up some of the spots to advertise mormon.org. It was pretty crazy the growth of the church. He also showed us some new pass-a-long cards for mormon.org, that are going to have one of those QR codes on them for people to go straight to the site on their phones. I'm grateful that the Lord prepared a way for me to go receive that new training, and I'm really excited about the growth of the church.
Those are the basic updates for the week. Not too much else to report. I'm pretty happy to stay in this area, especially with the blessings we received this week. A new transfer becomes another time for self-evaluation, and goal-setting to become even better. I hope I can continually improve as a trainer, and as a missionary, that we'll be able to do all in our power to make Trenton the strong area that it has the potential to be. I know that the Gospel is true! I know that it changes lives! And I'm so happy to be a first-hand witness of that fact.
I love you all so much!
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