Email from Elder Lofthouse 3/31/14

Hello family and friends!

It's been a long week. A lot of good things happened though. We had 6 investigators at church, twice as many as last week. 4 of those were the Q family. We were really focusing on helping them get to church this week. On Monday we had an FHE with the bishop where we talked about faith. Then we had a lesson with Sister Q where we re-explained the importance of the Sabbath day. She said that it's her husband who has to provide for the family and pay the rent and she can't really say anything about it. Thursday we got a chance to teach her husband and had a great lesson. We promised him blessings for keeping the commandments and he commited to God in the closing prayer that he would be at church on Sunday. And he was! They have their baptismal interviews on Friday, they'll be watching conference, and right after the last session will be baptized. Finally!

Our other investigator who should be baptized in April is R.  His ex-wife is a member, and after making a lot of bad life choices he now wants to change and become a good father.  He comes to church every week with her and his kids.  He lives across the street from a member and her dry-mormon husband, L, who is his uncle.  We're hoping to start teaching him in their home and maybe we can help L to finally make the decision to be baptized (he goes to church every single week and has for years and years).  

We also had an investigator tell a couple friends about us.  They're looking for a church and though he's never gone himself he recommended us.  They're names are F and M and in our first lesson with them they accepted a baptismal date for May 3rd.  They are the nicest people in the world.  Sadly they didn't show up at church yesterday, but we'll get them there.

Today I read that, "Humility is the fountain of all virtues" in the Adjusting to Missionary Life booklet.  That confirmed the conclusion I've come to over the last few weeks of my studies. 

Salvation starts with humility.

We can't repent unless we have faith in Jesus Christ.  And "[no man] can have faith and hope, save he shall be meek, and lowly of heart" (Moroni 7:43).  The examples of Enos, King Benjamin's people, and Alma the younger show that we must first be humble and recognize the need for the Atonement of Christ before it can be applied in our lives.  What is the goal of this life?  To prepare to receive eternal life.  How do we do that?  Living the gospel.

Mosiah 3:19 teaches that we must become humble, submissive, meek, and willing to submit to God's will.  We can only do that through the power of the atonement and by heeding the influence of the Holy Spirit.  We must first be humble if we ever want to make any progress. 

I love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Lofthouse

Email from Elder Lofthouse 3/24/14 God is Good

Good news:  This week was better.  I know that as we keep diligently working to improve, the blessings of the Lord come.

In our district meeting on Tuesday, we talked about leaving commitments and following up effectively.  Preach My Gospel says we should have daily contact with every one of our investigators.  Most of us have always just kind of ignored that part because it seems so impossible.  We role-played doing a two minute visit with someone to follow up with a commitment and made a gameplan in our companionships for how we were going to improve our leaving of commitments.  We've suddenly become very busy trying to follow up with every commitment every day.

Then, on Thursday we had Zone Conference.  It was one of the best we've had.  We talked about some statistcs:  In order to get one baptism, we have to find 48 new investigators through our own efforts.  In order to get one baptism, we only need 5 member referrals.  And for investigators found that are referred through members, if they are taught in the members' homes, 2 out of 3 of them will get baptized.  He had 48 of us stand up and form a line around the chapel to illustrate just how much more effective finding through the members is.

The next day in weekly planning we really focused on helping investigators come to church. We determined who would be good fellowship for each investigator and planned to have a member present at every single lesson. We haven't had a ton of success so far, but we're sure that we're going to be getting a lot more member present lessons over the next couple weeks. 

Then, on Saturday I had one of the best exchanges of my mission with Elder Orndorff. We found 2 new investigators, set 2 new baptismal dates (one of which is really solid) and taught 7 quality lessons.  Our exchange went fromSaturday morning to Sunday morning, so we went out together with a member before church to invite people to church and give rides. We had 8 people who we were expecting to be there! And we woke up one investigator, Michael, waited for him to get ready, and he came to church for the first time in a very, very long time! We only had 3 of those 8 at church, but 3 is a lot more than the 0 we've had the last 4 weeks.

Right now we have 5 solid baptisms set up for April. 4 of those are the Q family. M is still recovering, and was planning on coming to church on Sunday but right before she came she started feeling really sick and didn't make it. but in one week she should be back to 100% and then the family will be well on their way to baptism on the 6th of April!  The other one is R.  I'll tell you more about him next week.

I'm looking forward to this week. I feel busier than I've ever been on my mission but it's a productive kind of busy. We had 5 progressing investigators this week and part of that is because of our attempts to follow up daily on every commitment. Our ward is getting more excited about missionary work and the ward council is really trying harder to actively visit both investigators and less-actives and make game plans to help this ward progress. It's good to be a missionary in Madera! I would really like to spend the rest of my mission here.

I love you all so much!  And I just want to say that if you're every struggling or feel like you carrying a heavy burden, for any reason, don't be afraid to turn to your Priesthood leaders.  They can help!  I probably had a 10 minute meeting with President Gelwix after Zone Conference and felt so, so much lighter afterward.  If you need it, go get help!  Don't struggle on your own.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Lofthouse

Email from Elder Lofthouse 3/17/14 Hello

Hello to all.

I don't really have much to report on this week.  It's been a little rough.  Luckily we'll have Zone Conference on Thursday and that should be good.  I always enjoy getting a chance to talk with President.  I'm so sad he only has 3 1/2 months left!

No one came to church, we have no baptismal dates, we're struggling finding new investigators, and hardly anyone seems to be progressing.  The Qs didn't come to church yesterday because Sister Q is still feeling really sick and Brother Q had to go work.  I'm still confident they'll get baptized (Hermano Q is reading the Book of Mormon every day) but it's looking really uncertain how soon that will be.  

One bright light is a man named D who lives in the apartment right across from us.  He just moved there a couple weeks ago. He looks familiar and I think I may have street contacted him back in July when I was with Elder Crawford.  I need to ask him if he used to live on Washington street.  He has great questions, is reading the Book of Mormon and we just need to explain to him why we think he should be baptized again.  He's really open and I think he has a lot of potential.

Anyway, hopefully I get things figured out this week at the conference.  I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Lofthouse

Email from Elder Lofthouse 3/10/14

Hello everyone!  This week was pretty good.

Wednesday was amazing. Tuesday we had had a fantastic zone meeting full of inspiration and the Spirit (President Gelwix and the Assistants were there and President gave a great training on the role of the Holy Ghost in conversion). Part of that meeting was a training on effective planning using the planning guidelines given in Preach My Gospel. So Tuesday night Elder Villanueva and I had a great planning session. Wednesday morning, we adjusted some things and felt very sure that these were God's plans for that day. We went throughout that day striving to follow the Spirit and felt led in everything we did. We only had three lessons, but one of those was with a member family during the day (we hadn't even been sure they'd be home, but felt we should go), and we had a lot of great contacts. Tuesday and Wednesday have been two of the most Spirit-filled days I've had on my mission. I was receiving and following all kinds of different impressions.

I'm still figuring out how to be consistent though.  It was a rough end to the week.  We once again didn't have any investigators at church. And I was feeling pretty frustrated yesterday.  We got transfer calls late, late Saturday night.  Elder Villanueva and I are staying together.  Elder Crawford is going to be a zone leader with Elder Leavitt (my last district leader) up in Modesto!  That'll be cool.  

Anyway, I don't really know what else to write about.  I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Lofthouse

Email from Elder Lofthouse 3/3/14 Another Week

Hello!

M Q is finally out of the hospital. She's still a little sick, but she was tired of being there and she has all the medication she needs now. They said she should be completely fine in two weeks. What a relief! Hopefully we'll be having their baptism this weekend or next, depending on how she is feeling.

We had Stake Conference this Sunday.  None of our investigators came sadly, but it was a really great conference all about Hastening the Work of Salvation.  There were some really great talks, including from President and Sister Gelwix (they live in our Stake).  

Not much else happened this week.  We had a really great drop lesson with Hector.  The last few times we've gone over we've just been teaching the restoration over and over.  He says he knows the Book of Mormon is true, and that he got an answer that he should get baptized in our church, but he's still not sure about it.  We told him we weren't sure what else we could teach him or share with him.  It's on his shoulders to act on the knowledge he's received.  He understands that.   I don't know how to describe it and I'm not explaining the lesson very well at all, but there was so much love in that room.  The Spirit was strong.  It just felt right.  We told him to give us a call if he ever needed anything or if he decided he wanted to get baptized and he said he'd be calling us.  He also wants us to be sure to stop by and say goodbye before we get transferred.

Sorry for the poor quality letter.  I'll do better next week.  Oh, we get transfer calls on Saturday.  I think I'll be staying, but we'll see.  

Today I was studying about faith and how to increase faith.  According to the Bible Dictionary, faith is confidence in something or someone.  So faith in Jesus Christ is confidence in Jesus Christ.  So if we want to increase our faith in Christ, we really want to increase our confidence in him.  How can you be confident in someone you don't know?  How can we come to know Christ?  Well, the best way to get to know someone is to talk to them.  We talk with God through prayer and He talks to us through the scriptures.  As we study the scriptures, we get to know God better and our confidence in Him grows.  Then, as we apply what we learn and we live His gospel, we become more like Him.  And the more like Him we become the more we know Him, the more confidence we have in Him, and the more faith we will have.

I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Lofthouse