June 6, 2016

Hello Everyone! This has been a pretty fantastic week! First off, Jacob got baptized! I felt humbled and very grateful that he asked me to baptize him. I was Pretty nervous, I had only ever baptized one other person in my life, despite that though, it all went smoothly.

In addition to that, Steve had fallen off the map for awhile, but this last week we were able to get back in contact with him again! He's been having a super tough time with work and everything, so it's awesome we're meeting with him again. We had one investigator come to church yesterday, the older lady Diana, we have been teaching, our main focus with her has been mainly getting her to church, I'm hoping she'll start to come regularly now.

As for our two investigators in the foothill ward, Dave hasn't gotten over his issues with the temple yet, and we don't see him progressing for awhile, so we told him we'll give him a month to read the Book of Mormon, and then we'll start up the lessons again. We know the spirit has been in our lessons, and we know he knows the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph smith was a prophet, it'll be up to him if he will let those resolve his concerns or not. As for Anna, she turned 18 and so we passed her off to the YSA missionaries, she's still set on getting baptized, her parents were the ones who were putting a stop to it. But now that she's 18, they can't stop her, they aren't fully anti, they respect her decision, but don't agree with it. so don't worry, they won't disown her.

Over all I'm loving it out here! I am so grateful that I have this opportunity to be serving a mission, I know this is the place I am supposed to be, even though it's been really tough at times. I'll be honest, I've questioned whether or not I was ready for a mission while I've been out here, but over the last few weeks I've learned a little more of what "forget yourself" means, I've come to understand that it means to do all you can, but  rely on the Lord for those things that you can't do yourself. I know this Church is true, I love the Book of Mormon, I know it's the word of God, I will be the most faithful missionary I can be.

Until next week!

It is hot in Reno!

Another interesting street name

May 30, 2016

Hello everyone! Another week gone by and another week full of miracles but not in the way you'd expect. We had on average about 4 lessons set up every day this week, and, I kid you not, all but 3 fell through...  We had a week set up with at least 20 lessons, things were looking great, our area is kinda known as a tougher area so we were really excited to be getting this much work to do. Day after day things just kept falling through. We ended the week with the lowest amount of lessons of both our missions. Jacob's mom was sick on Sunday so neither of them were there. Despite all this, we had a miracle on Saturday. We talked to this guy in his 20's who just moved into the apartment complex next to ours (we live out of area) he was interested!Right after that a lady pulled up next to us in her car and asked if we could come study with her... for anyone who doesn't know what that means to missionaries, Imagine if some guy came up to you while you were taking a walk and just handed you a gold bar and then just walked away... That's basically how it feels. That is why we call them "golden" investigators. It was awesome that we found them, but we won't be teaching either of them because neither of them live in our area... but that's okay... I'll survive...

Don't think we weren't working hard, we just received the blessings from our hard work in a way that we didn't think we would. It's funny how that happens sometimes. You think you need something a certain way, and you work hard to get it, but God knows better. It really strengthened my faith that God know best, and that when we turn everything to Him, He will give you what's best.

Until next week!