This was sent from Clint on August 1st.
This week has had some really good days and some not so good days. I made a pact with myself to make sure that at least one good thing happens every day though. And that barely happened this week on one day.
On Wednesday we just didn't do anything. I mean we were working hard but nothing was coming from what we were doing. So we were bummed. To make a long story short all of our back up plans fell through (yes we made multiple back up plans and they all fell through). So I looked at Elder Thomas and said, "ok when we don't have anything to do, we tract." We hate tracting. Not because we're scared to talk to people or anything but because it is not as effective in finding people to teach from referrals, service, etc. So we reluctantly got out of the car and started to tract. Nobody was home. We knocked on about 20 doors and one person answered and they made up a lame excuse, "um..I'm leaving right now and I have to go get changed. I was just about done. Seriously I was on the verge of just going back to the car and trying to find something else to do. Then we decided to knock one more door. That person wasn't home. We turned around feeling sorry for ourselves and then we saw a lady walking down the street. The second I saw her, I immediately knew we were supposed to talk to her. We talked very briefly and introduced ourselves. She exclaimed that she was a baptized member of the church but hadn't been in ages. She said she really wanted to go but had no way of getting to the church and she didn't even know where it was. Her name was Verla. We set up an appointment the very next day to meet with her. The next day we sat down and she poured out her soul to us. She said she was so grateful that we had stopped by at that moment. We gave her a blessing and told her we could get her a ride to church. She cried and thanked us again. Yesterday she came out to church and loved it. That was the only good thing that happened on wednesday. But wow! I'm so glad that we kept working just for that one last door. Man, I'm so grateful to the Lord in putting people in our paths every single day. He really is so powerful.
We also set 2 dates for people to be baptized this week. We set the date for Olivia on August 20th and Minnie for September 11th. I don't remember if I told you guys about these two wonderful people. So Olivia we found through a member. It's kinda weird we just showed up for dinner and they also brought their non-member friend, Olivia. Well apparently they weren't that good of friends because now they don't really talk to each other. But we got her phone number and started meeting with her in Toledo. And man, she is awesome. She has 2 daughters Sadie and Cierra who have been listening in on the lessons. In our last lesson we just were talking about the plan of salvation and how you need to be baptized to get to the Celestial kingdom. And all the sudden she said, "what do you have to do to be baptized?" Me and Elder Thomas exchanged glances really quick then I said, "well I'm glad you asked because that is what we were going to get into next." Then that's when we invited her to be baptized on the 20th. We weren't even planning on setting a date with her on this lesson but when somebody asks a question like that, you have no choice.
Minnie is this super sweet old lady. She has been through some really rough times in the past and she has a firm belief that God has put her where she is now. She just drinks up everything we teach her. She completely accepts the Book of Mormon as being true. She's already in Alma! She was a bit apprehensive about setting a firm date but I think she really wants it now.
Elnora is still keeping it up. Still coming to church and is taking the lessons. We are also working with Shari still. Shari actually called us up this week and randomly asked us if we could come over for a lesson. We heartily agreed. The reason why she called was because her mom was in town and had been feeding her daughter a lot of anti-mormon information. Shari wanted us to come over and explain to her mom that she was wrong. ha ha. I love how she didn't even question whether her mom was right or not. So we went over and we cleared up some misconceptions about the temple and other things. We also invited her mom to church and she agreed just to see what it was like. She very much enjoyed it.
Been working with another family in Toledo. Tony and Amber and their 2 kids. They said they were going to come to church but the kids got sick. Oh well they said they would come next week. I'll have to tell you more about them later.
But this week has been quite eventful and a real roller coaster. But we're holding up quite well. The gospel is true. Joseph was the Smith and Jesus is the Christ! I love y'all.
Love,
Elder Johnson
