The church is true, the book is blue

May 20, 2013

This week has been so great! We were SO busy which makes for a great week. We taught a guy we met on the street the first lesson, and committed him for baptism at the end of June! He was so prepared to hear what we had to say- it was so cool. His name is Holden and when we taught him about prophets and baptism and Joseph Smith he would just be like "that's tight" or "I dig it!" haha it was such a powerful lesson. We met another man from Zimbabwe named Zion with dreads. He was really cool and is coming to church on Sunday. It is so cool seeing the gospel click in people's lives- teaching the Plan of Salvation is one of the coolest experiences because it makes sense to people and it answers all the questions of the soul. We had an investigator named Chris who was having trouble with the other missionaries that were teaching him, but when we started to teach him you could see wheels turning and he started to accept the invitations and then we took a leap of faith and invited him to be baptized...and he apparently has already been baptized before? We were so sad! So now we are just teaching about the covenants he has already made and preparing him to take the sacrament. However he decided to go stand on a platform on the strip the other night and start reading from Matthew and call the people to repentance, so we might still need to work with him for a while.

We had dinner with less active the other night and he asked where i was from then said he was familiar with the area because he works in Basin City every summer- turns out he is Raleigh and Hawkins' nephew and used to work in the orchards every summer growing up. Small world. His name is Drake Allsop. It is so cool to see our little branch growing as we have been bringing less actives and investigators to church every week- the ward is so inviting and willing to help us, it makes our life a lot easier.

We met with a guy this past week who was baptized about a month ago and realized he might not know as much about the church as most members so we sat down and asked him about his testimony of the Church and Book of Mormon. He hardly knew anything about the book and didn't really understand how the church was organized or what it really meant- it was so sad. So we are still teaching him the lessons. It has taught me though to make sure that everyone i teach knows what a sacred commitment baptism is, and that it shouldn't be taken lightly.

I got to go the temple twice this week! Once with the new missionaries and once with Sister Lake and a lady she taught. It was so cool. It stinks that we can't just be there always, but we have been talking a lot about how a temple can be made at any address. We read parts of D&C 109 with a family (the Kirtland dedicatory prayer) and it is cool to read that and apply it to your own home. If we make our home a house of fasting, prayer, order, etc we can have the same blessings as promised in the temple and in verses 22 and 23ish of that section

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!
Sister Stoker