June 13, 2011

Hello Everyone!!!
This week was a very very good week! We had the last Zone Conference I will have with this mission president, President Watrous and Sister Watrous. On July 1st we will be getting our new mission president, President and Sister Bowen from Idaho Falls, Idaho(which is pretty darn cool if you ask me...them being from my birthplace and all ;). It is definitely crazy how fast time has flown by during my mission! Well this week all of the colleges ended school and so everyone went back home, so the work has been a little slower and tougher because not as many young single adults are around but we have been finding some great ones that are sticking around for the summer! This week I had one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission that I want to share, hoping to inspire anyone reading this.

I was on a companion exchange with my old companion and trainer Elder Chang again. He and I felt impressed to go to a certain apartment complex. We knocked on a door and a girl answered the door, we asked her if she had talked to Mormons before and she said "Yeah, he is one" and pointed to a guy that was on the other side of the room. When he saw us he immediately invited us in. We went and sat on their back porch with him and he told us that he is a member and had served a mission, but he has been less active for a very long time. We found that he has had some very rough experiences since he kind of fell away and he has been thinking about it all a lot more just in the recent past. He told us that it is funny we came that day because the night before he had decided in his mind that he wanted to go back to church and try to change his life around. I felt impressed to share very specific scriptures with him that I really have never shared before. Then I felt impressed to say to him "This is your second chance. I know you can overcome this, I have full faith in you. You can get yourself out of this rut that you have fallen into. I have faith in you and I know the Lord has given you this opportunity to get out." He got really quiet and then started to cry very hard. After a minute or two he looked at me and said "How did you know that?.....How did you know that?", I was a little confused at what he was meaning but then he said "I have been praying to God a lot lately, specifically to send someone into my life that has faith and trust in me and can tell me I can get out of this rut I am stuck in...and you just said that. You don't even know me....how did you know? You answered my prayers" and he continued to cry. It was a very spiritually strong experience that I have been thinking a lot about. The Lord knows his children and he will use others as the angels on earth that can pick us up when we are down or need help. I believe that when we make the right choices and live our lives according to the Gospel we will be in the position where God can use us as a tool in his hands to bless the lives of others. I love this Gospel and I know it is true with all of my heart! I love you all and hope all is going well! Until next week!