Thursday, June 19, 2014

Email from Elder Lofthouse 6/9/14

I am so excited for this transfer. I am so thankful to have Elder Morrow as a companion.  He's from Virginia, he's 20, and he's been out 14 months. He is a fantastic missionary! 

R C got baptized yesterday. We met with him a couple hours beforehand and he thanked us for opening his eyes and helping him join the Church of Jesus Christ. Not too long ago, I wasn't even sure he really understood the restoration. He has made leaps and bounds in the last month! He has a lot of family in the ward, and they were are really excited and could hardly believe he was actually getting baptized. Everyone's faith is really high right now that his wife, B, will soon follow.

M came to church yesterday for the first time! He has a baptismal date for June 28th. He has also made leaps and strides in the last couple months and his less-active wife is no longer less-active. I hope she gets a calling soon. I am very excited for them.

We also got a new ward mission leader yesterday.  He served a mission in Missouri, was the first convert in his family (they've almost all been baptized in the last 10 years now), and is already really good friends with us.  We are all super excited.  He has a lot of good plans and is going to be such a blessing to this ward.

Our best experience this week was with an investigator named F. We hadn't seen her for quite awhile. We started the lesson by asking her what she remembered from what we had taught and she really didn't remember much. Then, Elder Morrow started asking inspired question after inspired question. He asked if she was ready to make covenants with God. She said that the missionaries wanted her to get baptized, but she didn't intend to get baptized. She'd talked to someone who's gone to our church for years without getting baptized and told her that she didn't need to get baptized to go to church and hear the word of God. Elder Morrow asked her if she had asked God if she should get baptized and she said no. With absolutely no hestiation, Elder Morrow got on his knees and said, "We can do it right now then!" She said, "Okay," got on her knees and asked how to do it. I re-explained to her prayer and we told her that we would stay on our knees after the prayer and pay attention to how we felt. She said a very sincere, faith-filled prayer, saying, "Please tell me if I should get baptized in a dream, because only you know my problems and my situation, and I need you to tell me in a dream... or right now, if I should get baptized." As soon as she said, "right now," the Spirit flooded the room. After she said amen, we stayed on our knees for probably 5 minutes straight, just basking in the Spirit. It was wonderful! My companion then said, "I sense you've received your answer." She nodded and he said, "So will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the authority from God?" She said she was going to talk to her daughter-in-law who is getting baptized in one of the English wards soon to see when it would be. It was amazing how quickly the Spirit changed her!

Well, I hope you are doing well.  Have a fantastic week!

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