So last time we met with Natalie and Jake they told us they didn't want to meet anymore but she still wanted to be baptized. Well this Sunday an incredible thing happened. Jake was ordained to the office of a priest. So now he will be able to baptize his wife. We set up a lesson for this Sunday and we were very cautious. We didn't want to push them in any way. We asked if they had any sort of time frame for when they wanted to be baptized. They responded quite unexpectedly by saying she wanted to be baptized this Saturday. So we are going to have an amazing baptism this Saturday!
Last time I talked about how Sarah (a girl talked to while on our bikes) came to church. Well this week we sat down with her for the first time. We had the most picture perfect lesson EVER. It was great. Right at the beginning of the lesson we asked her if she had received answers to prayers before. She said yes, and went on to explain a story of how she had received her answer. She was in tears right in the very beginning as she talked about it. We then went on to talk about the Restoration of the Gospel. We talked about how Christs chuch was on the Earth but eventually it fell away. Then it came time to talk about Joseph Smith. We invited her to think about how she felt as we recited the first vision. She did and at the end she was in tears again. We asked her how she felt and she explained a feeling of warmth and happiness. We said, "the way you can always feel this feeling in your heart is by following Christ's example and by being baptized. Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized on December 8th?"
Yes!
"We promise that you will have peace and joy and direction in your life. And when you are baptized you will feel all the feelings of guilt and shame washed away!"
She then said in her tears, "that's all I ever wanted."
It was a fantastic lesson.
We also had a horrible lesson this week with a lady named Jill. We taught the same lesson but when we invited her to be baptized on December 2nd she just stared at us blankly. We asked her again.....and again.....she just didn't understand what we were asking her to do. In the end we invited her like 5 times and she eventually said no.
We have started up a Book of Mormon class. It's one of the finding ideas in PMG but we've never used it. So we decided to try it out. The first week we invited everybody. One person showed up. The next week we commited a bunch of people to come. We had 4 people. This last week we kept inviting more people and we there were about 10 people and 1 of them investigators. It's going pretty well. Kirsten is the investigator that came. Kirsten is AMAZING. She has read up to Alma 48 in the Book of Mormon. She is super blunt about everything. She came to church yesterday for the first time. It just so happens that yesterday the Bishop was released and we got a new one. (this was nice because originally we were scheduled to give a talk but the day before church we got a text saying we won't be speaking anymore. I didn't complain.) She leaned over to me and said, "I like the new Bishop better. The old one seems not as in tune with the modern world." We have a meeting with her tonight and she has been telling us for a week that today is the day......she is going to stop smoking!!! We are very excited. She is so ready. She just needs to come to church once more then she can be baptized. She hardly ever has work off on Sundays though. This becomes an issue. We will pray for her.
So Thanksgiving is this week. We have a shortened p-day today and we get the whole day off on Thursday. So thats all the time I have. Thanks and love you all!!!
Elder Johnson
